By the time you've payed your car loan, insurance, CTP, Rego, road tolls, fuel, vehicle maintenance, the last thing you need is a rise in petrol prices:
However:
"Mr Hockey wants to end the 13-year freeze on the indexation of the fuel excise, saying over four years it would raise more than $2 billion, which would be spent on roads."
This morning he stood by his comments.
"The Australian Bureau of Statistics data states that the highest 20 per cent of household incomes pay three times more in fuel taxes than the lowest 20 per cent of household incomes," he told ABC NewsRadio from Perth.
"The Australian Bureau of Statistics data is not something that I've concocted, it is the reality. These are dealing with the facts."
However, the Parliamentary Library found in 2001 that raising the fuel excise would be regressive, because low-income earners paid a higher proportion of their income on the tax than higher earners using the same amount of fuel.
The Treasurer is not disputing the analysis.
"Well, that is the case with any indirect tax. Obviously with the GST... when we introduced the GST there were substantial tax cuts," he said.
Yesterday, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten seized on Mr Hockey's comments as evidence the Government was out of touch and "remarkably arrogant", describing the Treasurer as the "Foghorn Leghorn of Australian politics".
Today Mr Hockey said Mr Shorten was a "complete hypocrite".
"The Labor Party is always going to run this personality politics. Good luck to them. Others will join in," he said.
"I don't care about that commentary, I care about dealing with the facts and ensuring that we have a strong economy."
Former Howard government minister Peter Reith says the ABS statistics show Mr Hockey is "completely right".
"Treasurers cop a lot of flak however they are going, but in some of the points he has been making he has been right to make them," he said.
"Let's face it, the Labor Party are absolutely opposed to absolutely everything that he does, whether it is good, bad or otherwise."
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Obviously the more you drive the more you'll pay.
Maybe that'll make people use public transport more, which would be a good thing. I'm looking forward to this new railway being finished it might mean we only have to run one car.
Maybe some of the girls at here at work will make the short walk over to the shops instead of driving.
Maybe it'll make the city's traffic congestion ease up a bit.
