Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Hasluck for her question. As a Western Australian member, she well understands the benefits of Fuelwatch, as did the Liberal Party in Western Australia when they introduced the scheme, and as does the Leader of the Opposition in New South Wales. Fuelwatch brings increased competition to the petrol market by requiring petrol stations to notify the ACCC of their next day’s price at 2 pm every day, forcing petrol stations to pick their cheapest, best price in order to ensure that they get turnover in an industry which relies so strongly on turnover. As I said yesterday, one of the great benefits of Fuelwatch is that it enables consumers to find the cheapest petrol. The difference between the cheapest and the most expensive petrol in any given city can be 10c, 20c or 30c a litre quite regularly. This enables motorists to find that cheap petrol where at the moment they have absolutely no chance of finding the cheap petrol as they drive around the city looking for it.

At the moment, of course, this is all a one-way street. At the moment petrol stations and oil companies share information. They share their pricing information and motorists and consumers are not allowed to see it. This is a very important point and it is a point that the ACCC made some very interesting findings on in their significant report. This is what they had to say in their petrol report, which was released last December:

The direct exchange of price information between suppliers is conducive to anti-competitive coordination ...

They went on to say:

... the circulation of price data on a very frequent, or near real time basis, raises concerns that it could be promoting anti-competitive behaviour among the refiner-marketers and supermarket chains in the retail market.

So the ACCC said that we have a situation which is conducive to anticompetitive coordination. Any party which chooses to oppose Fuelwatch in this parliament is saying that they support a situation which allows anticompetitive coordination. They support a situation which means that motorists are locked out of the information which petrol stations share with each other. As the Prime Minister indicated, there is considerable evidence based on the findings of the ACCC that FuelWatch in Western Australia has put downward pressure on prices—by a modest amount, but downward pressure nevertheless.

Some members opposite, the Leader of the Opposition in particular, have questioned whether those benefits are available to people who buy only on Tuesdays, only on the cheaper days of the week. It is a fair enough question for analysis. The ACCC found that their analysis was robust every day of the week. Regardless of when people buy, they found downward pressure on prices. Perhaps it was put a little more eloquently and a little more colourfully by the shadow minister for fair trading in New South Wales, who said this about the claims of honourable members opposite—this is a good one; wait for it: ‘My federal colleagues appear to be unaware of what’s going on in the Sydney market.’ It is those opposite she is talking about. This is Catherine Cusack, the shadow minister for fair trading in New South Wales.

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