Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Revenue) Share this | Hansard source

or whether it is just that he is chicken, as my colleagues say, or whether he is protecting someone. The Australian people are entitled to know why he will not take this simple step. We are not saying that it is going to reduce the price of petrol by 20c a litre, but we are saying that, in the face of high oil prices, he needs to do everything humanly possible to mitigate the effects of those high oil prices.

The second thing that the Treasurer could do is to finally get into this place amendments to strengthen the Trade Practices Act. It is well known by all and sundry on both sides of politics that section 46 of the Trade Practices Act no longer reflects the original intention of the parliament. This is as a result of a number of High Court cases—in particular, the Boral case and the Safeway case—which have significantly undermined the ACCC’s ability to secure a prosecution for misuse of market power. We need those amendments in this place. The opposition will move these amendments if we get to debate the Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill tomorrow—if the Treasurer has the courage to bring that bill on tomorrow, as was the plan when we received the House routine of business earlier in the week. That is the second thing the government could do immediately.

The third thing the government could do is to get on with reforming the retail market in this country. We are working under a 26-year-old regulatory regime—a regime that has been circumvented by the major oil companies by way of multisite franchising and circumvented by the fact that Woolies and Coles are not covered by the act. We have been talking about this reform for years.

The Labor Party stands ready to support this reform, but the government has been unable to show the leadership required to get agreement in the industry to bring forward a package that is broadly supported in the industry. That is the first point. The second point is import dependence. This government has no energy plan. It does not know what our future needs are going to be. It has no plan to ensure we have resources to meet those needs. It is pretty good at shipping off LPG to other countries, which we support, but it has no plan for our own use of it.

The Leader of the Opposition put out a fuels blueprint earlier in the year. I would like to refer the Prime Minister to it. Indeed, he must have read it because just this morning there were reports that already the government is pinching part of it in its announcement that it intends to do something about LPG. What hypocrisy for the government to be talking about giving a lift up to LPG, when it was this government that opposed a tax on LPG for the first time. We need an energy plan in this country. We need to reduce oil import dependency. We need to diversify our fuel mix to biofuels, LPG and CNG and, in doing so, reduce the downward pressure—(Time expired)

See this speech in context