Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

In response to the honourable member’s question, and for those in regional and rural Australia as well as in our cities, I draw her attention to the report delivered by the ACCC on the implementation of a response to the petrol price inquiry. What I find interesting about this document is that it was commissioned not by this government; it was actually commissioned by the previous government. In fact, the document was commissioned in June 2007 by the member for Higgins. So I turn to page 247 of this document, which says as follows:

The main finding from this econometric analysis is that the average of the price margin reduced by a statistically significant amount for Perth relative to the eastern capitals in the time since the introduction of FuelWatch. The relevant weekly average price margin was around 1.9 cpl less on average for the period from January 2001 to June 2007 than for the period from August 1998 to December 2000.

Further it goes on:

These results are robust to using monthly averages rather than weekly averages. This reduces further any influence of weekly price cycles. A decrease of around 1.9 cpl—

See this speech in context