A Liberal backbencher has called for Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson to double his promise to cut fuel excise from five cents a litre to 10 cents, reports ABC News.

Backbencher Christopher Pearce has suggested the federal opposition should promise to cut fuel excise in a desperate bid to capitalise on public concern about petrol prices and so lift the party’s stocks.

I say that neither Nelson nor Pearce have the answer: neither of them go far enough. I am calling for a cut in the fuel excise of 171.9 cents per litre, which would make petrol free. Free, as in beer. FREE PETROL FOR ALL!

Here’s how it’s done.

First, we end all imports of foreign oil. I for one am sick to death of Australian motorists’ dollars being sent to wealthy Saudi sheiks and Venezuelan socialist crackpots. MY PLAN will keep your petrol money in Australia.

Next, we nationalise the petroleum industry. Australia’s dwindling oil reserves rightly belong to Australian working families who are doing it tough, not to multinational oil drilling companies. MY PLAN will return all remaining oil to the people of Australia to use as they see fit. It will also create lots of jobs in the newly nationalised petroleum drilling and refining agency, the Federal Reserve Energy Exploitation (FREE) Authority. That’s FREE as in PETROL.

FREE PETROL.

Now, according to the most recently published figures from APPEA (the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association), in 2007 Australia produced 119.9 million barrels of crude oil. Professor Dick Plano of Rutgers University says that each barrel of crude produces 19.5 US gallons (73.8 litres) of petrol, plus other distillates. So that would give us 8.8 billion litres of unleaded to play with per year (this amount will obviously decline as our oil reserves are exhausted, but that won’t be before the next election so let’s not worry too much about that). Selling those other distillates will pay the operational costs of the exercise, giving us FREE PETROL AT NO COST TO THE TAXPAYER.

Those 8.8 billion litres will be allocated equally to all Australian citizens – that’s roughly 440 litres of petrol for every man, woman and child, enough to fill an average family car five times. MY PLAN will provide 440 litres of clean, high octane, Australian-made unleaded for every Australian TO DO WITH AS THEY WISH.

Obviously some people will need more than that, so I will also establish a simple online market where you can sell your petrol ration to the highest bidder if you wish. That’s right, if you’re prepared to take public transport, MY PLAN provides FREE PETROL you can SELL TO RICH PEOPLE FOR WHATEVER THEY WILL PAY.

MY PLAN is a tax cut, an industry policy, an employment initiative all in one. Plus, it will improve our balance of trade and stick it up the oil barons once and for all.

VOTE FOR ME. FREE PETROL FOR EVERYONE.