TL;DR: On 1 August the fuel excise relief ends. Right now the excise is cut by 16 c/L — the rate sits at 36.6 c/L instead of the full indexed 52.6 c/L. When that 16 c/L cut comes off, the bowser steps up about 17.6 c/L once GST stacks on top. On a 50 L fill that’s about $8.80 more per tank — and because excise is a flat per-litre charge, it lands identically on petrol and diesel. The awkward part: Brisbane is already near the top of its cycle. Today the metro ULP median is 175.9 c/L and 82.7% of ULP stations are sitting in the top 10% of their own 30-day range. Diesel’s metro median is 214.9 c/L, also at the top of its 30-day range. So the excise floor lifts on top of prices that are already high.
One of you asked the question this post is really about, in a review of the other app:
“Why is it that prices jump in some instances when the barrel price is still way down?” — Petrolspy iOS 5★, 2024-12-13
Different jump this time. This one isn’t crude, and it isn’t the majors. It’s tax, and it’s on the calendar.
The claim
Fuel excise relief ends on 1 August. The current relief is a 16 c/L cut, and when it comes off the full indexed excise rate returns. Every litre you buy gets dearer — petrol and diesel alike — no matter where crude or the cycle happens to sit that week.
What we checked
Two separate things, and it’s worth being clear which is which.
The excise step-up itself is not our number. The current rate, the relief ending on 1 August, and the full rate returning come from the government’s own notice and the ATO (PM&C fuel-tax-relief notice, ATO excise rates, 15 July 2026). We didn’t compute them. We’re quoting them, and here’s the arithmetic in full so you can check it:
- The full indexed excise rate is 52.6 c/L. Under the current relief measure it’s cut by 16 c/L, so drivers are paying 36.6 c/L right now.
- When the relief ends on 1 August, that 16 c/L cut comes off. GST is one eleventh of the pump price, so a 16 c/L rise in the ex-GST price adds another 1.6 c of GST on top — about 17.6 c/L at the bowser (16 × 1.1).
The government notice frames the current measure as a 16 c/L cut running to 1 August; that’s the number we’ve built the tank maths on, not a full-halving figure. (In April the cut was 32 c/L — a 50% halving — but it was tapered to 16 c/L from July, so the returning step is 16 c of excise, not 26.)
What we sourced is the live Queensland retail picture that step-up lands on, pulled straight from the QLD Government feed:
- Brisbane metro — everything within 30 km of the GPO — had 473 stations reporting today. 440 quoted ULP, and all 473 quoted a diesel.
- We took the live median from each, and for every station we placed today’s price inside that station’s own 30-day range (20 June to 20 July): 0 means the station’s 30-day low, 1 means its 30-day high.
What the data shows
Petrol. Metro ULP median today: 175.9 c/L across 440 stations. The median station’s own 30-day range runs 151.9 up to 176.4 — and today’s 175.9 is sitting right at the top of it. Across the metro, 82.7% of ULP stations are in the top 10% of their own 30-day range. The median station is at position 1.0. That’s about as close to the peak as a cycle gets.
Diesel — my beat, and the one everyone forgets. Metro diesel median today: 214.9 c/L across 473 stations. Its 30-day range runs 177.9 to 215.9, and today’s read is 214.9 — again, near the very top. Diesel doesn’t run petrol’s discount cycle, but it’s high right now on its own terms.
Now the excise, laid on top of that:
About 17.6 c/L more at the bowser. On a 50 L fill that’s 17.6 × 50 = about $8.80 more per tank. Because excise is charged per litre — not as a percentage of the price — it hits a tank of petrol and a tank of diesel by the exact same $8.80. There’s no cheaper grade to duck it with.
The verdict, and the so-what for your tank
From 1 August your fill costs roughly $8.80 more for the same 50 litres, before crude or the cycle does anything at all. Scale it to your tank: a commuter hatch at ~45 L is about $8; a tradie ute or van at 60–80 L is closer to ~$10.50–14 a fill. My own D-Max sits in that upper band, so I’ve done this maths for real.
Two honest add-ons. First, this is the excise step only — it stacks on top of wherever the cycle already is, and right now Brisbane’s near its peak, so an early-August petrol fill could be dearer still. A later cycle trough might partly mask the rise at the pump, but the excise floor itself moves up permanently either way. Second, there’s nothing you can do to dodge the tax — but you can still avoid overpaying the retail part on top of it. Today, with 82.7% of ULP stations at the top of their own range, the spread between servos is where the only saving lives. Before you fill, check today’s price against each station’s own recent range and pick the low end — you can see where each Brisbane station sits right now on Pinly, sourced from the same QLD Government feed these numbers come from.
The honest limit
The 16 c/L cut, the 36.6 c/L current rate, the 52.6 c/L full rate and the relief ending on 1 August are external figures I’m citing, not ones Pinly derived — treat them as the published measure they are. And the diesel median leans on a labelling quirk in the feed: of those 473 stations, 360 report a “premium diesel” price and 179 report the plain-diesel code, with 66 carrying both — so the two labels overlap rather than partition, which is why we union them per station the way the app does. Split by label, plain diesel reads 213.9 and premium reads 216.9; the pooled family median here lands at 214.9, between the two — pooling is a fair fix rather than a fudge, but a clean premium-only number isn’t separable from this feed. The number leads; where the number’s borrowed, I’ve said so.