Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Until he made his last few comments, I was about to say I agreed with much of what the member for Lyons had to say, but he spoiled it there at the end. This particular piece of legislation, the Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill 2006, was on the Notice Paper before that range of measures was announced by the Prime Minister yesterday. Yet this bill still goes a small way in one small measure towards trying to take some of the upward pressure off the price of petrol. This bill aims to do that by increasing competition by reducing the restrictions on competition in the petrol market, thus trying to put some downward pressure on prices at the margin. There is no doubt about it: motorists are feeling the pain of high petrol prices—whether they are parents driving their children to and from school or sporting events or to do the shopping, whether they are commuters travelling by car to and from work, whether they are small businesses using their motor vehicles as part of their work, or whether they are larger transport companies and are passing on the high cost of fuel to consumers purchasing their products and thus adding to inflation in this country. Whichever they are, there is no doubt that the higher fuel prices are causing significant pain throughout this country.

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