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

They do not like hearing from real people, do they? Mick from Sutherland says:

One of the big benefits of FuelWatch here in Western Australia is that we no longer have the situation of you being in a queue to fill up because it is discounted and then the price suddenly goes back up before you turn up at the browser.

JoJo of Perth says:

Living in Western Australia, I often use FuelWatch. Prices are still lower in the middle of the week here, but by using FuelWatch, I can often find prices later in the week and on weekends at the same low rates as Tuesday.

And they go on. This is from a woman who emailed me at Easter:

Dear Minister,

I am concerned about the price rises in petrol. Just before Easter, when I was taking my family away on holidays, I lined up at the service station and as I was lining up the price went up 15c a litre while I was in the queue.

Mr Speaker, I have to confess my life is a  lot easier now. Now, whenever I get an email, I am going to press the forward button and I am going to type in Brendan.Nelson.MP@aph.gov.au and say Mr Nelson is stopping FuelWatch, and I am sure he would be happy to explain himself to you. I am sure he would be happy to explain why you should not have information about the cheapest place to buy petrol. I am sure he would be able to explain to you why, when petrol prices are about to go up 10c or 15c a litre before a weekend, you get no notice. I am sure he would be able to explain to you that the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive petrol in any city could range from 15c to 30c a litre but he does not want you to know. He would be happy to explain it, and so now the forward button on my keyboard is going to get a real workout as I forward it to Brendan.Nelson.MP@aph.gov.au, because they are the ones standing in the way of more information for Australian motorists. They are the ones saying, ‘We can shrug our shoulders and do nothing to help you.’ They are the ones saying, ‘We don’t care about volatility in fuel prices and we don’t care about giving you more information to manage it.’ They are the ones saying, ‘We don’t care what the consumer watchdog thinks. We don’t care what Graeme Samuel thinks. We will ignore him, like we did in government, because we don’t care about consumers.’ That is the message from the opposition today. That is what they say. They say, ‘We’re going to sit in Canberra and we’re not going to listen to the people who stand up for Australian consumers and we’re not going to listen to the Australian consumers themselves!’

There is a reason why they are sitting where they are, and that is because, after 11 years in office, they lost touch. They did not listen to the Australian people about cost-of-living pressures. They have a shadow Treasurer who waltzed into this building and said: ‘Interest rate increases are overdramatised. It’s not such a problem.’ He probably thinks fuel prices were overdramatised as well when he was in office. He probably thought grocery prices were overdramatised when he was in office. And I can understand why he would think that, but the Australian people do not think that.

The Australian people are looking to a government to say: ‘There are cost-of-living pressures and they are not easy to fix. There are worldwide trends, which are not easy to fix. But we can make a difference, we can give you more information, we can put you back in charge, we can give you an even break and we can give you a chance to drive your dollar further.’ This government believes it. We will continue stand by it, we will continue to pursue it and we will continue to pursue you for your policy bankruptcy.

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