Updated ,first published
It may be April Fool’s Day but April 1 is no laughing matter for the hip pocket.
Australians already grappling with interest rate hikes have two more growing household bills their budgets need to account for. The fuel excise tax cut announced this week is not guaranteed to provide the relief that would be welcome for their wallets. Here’s what you need to know.
Private health insurance premium pain
The clock strikes midnight and fifteen million Australians are hit by the biggest rise in private health insurance premiums this decade.
In February, the federal government approved a 4.41 per cent increase in the average policy cost, effective from April 1. That rate is an average, so the amount will differ between insurers and policies.
Bupa and Medibank, which cover half of all Australians with private health insurance, have average increases of 4.8 and 5.1 per cent, respectively. AIA’s average premium increase is almost 6 per cent and HBF’s is 2.15 per cent.
The above-inflation hike, up from last year’s 3.73 per cent increase, reflected the rising costs of delivering hospital and medical services, said Health Minister Mark Butler. They increased by 5 per cent in the 2024-25 financial year.
Health insurers, meanwhile, attribute rising costs to higher payouts for claims. They are required by law to have notified members before April 1, in writing, exactly how much more they will be paying. Read more here.
All sighs, no relief when opening energy bills
If Treasurer Jim Chalmers had not introduced the Energy Bill Relief Fund, electricity prices would have lifted much more than the 8.2 per cent they did between mid-2023 and the end of 2025.
But the days of Australian homes and small businesses paying $75 less a quarter are over, and they have been since the subsidy ended on December 31.
April 1, however, marks the first quarterly electricity bill many will open in years without that rebate being automatically applied – and it’s unclear if it will again.
The six-month extension to the scheme, announced by Chalmers in the 2025-26 budget, cost the government $1.8 billion, bringing the total cost since the subsidies were first announced in 2023 to $7 billion.
Chalmers has been under pressure to cut government spending and he has signalled the May 12 budget, his fifth, will include “hard decisions”.
Can the fuel excise cut save the day?
Slashing the fuel excise tax in half – saving motorists 26¢ per litre at the bowser – was a welcome move for some Australians about to embark on their Easter long weekend road trips.
With the price of Cadbury hollow eggs almost doubling per gram in the past two years, saving about $20 on a 65-litre tank of petrol every time you fill up from April 1 to June 30 is significant.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen, however, said prices at the bowser wouldn’t drop straight away as retailers needed to sell the stock they had purchased at a higher price first.
The long-term isn’t all good news, however, as economists have said the savings from the 26¢-a-litre cut to the fuel excise tax could be wiped out within weeks as the global oil price continues to climb.
That and the suspension of the heavy vehicle road user charge for truckies is also set to damage the budget’s bottom line and put significant pressure on interest rates, which were raised by a quarter of a percentage point in March to 4.1 per cent. Read more here.
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Bronte Gossling is a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, WAtoday and Brisbane Times.Connect via email.
