Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in support of the National Fuelwatch (Empowering Consumers) Bill 2008 and the National Fuelwatch (Empowering Consumers) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2008. I am especially pleased to do so as a Western Australian—someone who, unlike the previous speaker, the member for Cowper, has experience with the Western Australian FuelWatch scheme and an understanding of the benefits of it. I have been contacted by fellow sandgropers who have been quite bemused by the recent parliamentary and media debate surrounding Fuelwatch.

We are bemused because it would appear that members opposite do not understand how the scheme works and how consumers can benefit from it. The bill’s title should make that clear. It is the national Fuelwatch bill and it is about empowering consumers. It is a comprehensive fuel price monitoring and reporting system. It places an obligation on fuel retailers to advise and notify the consumer about the next day’s fuel prices. It requires the information to be made public. This, in turn, allows consumers to make informed decisions about the purchase of their fuel.

As I have previously said, I am at a loss to discern what the opposition finds so reprehensible about this proposal. The other benefits to consumers, which are set out succinctly in the explanatory memorandum, are also clear. It empowers consumers to make informed decisions about their fuel purchases. It allows consumers to be informed of the lowest price possible for fuel in their local area. It allows consumers to go directly to the retailer in their local area with the lowest or most competitive price, saving the cost of searching for the best deal in town. It allows consumers certainty, and the price of fuel when published will apply for the whole day, eliminating that daily price volatility.

Our Western Australian experience demonstrates that this scheme also promotes competition in the retail fuel market. I said earlier that some Western Australians had been bemused by the parliamentary and media debate on Fuelwatch. Let me quote from one email I received from a local Western Australian supporter of FuelWatch after he heard some of this debate on the national media. He said:

I’ve been following the fuel watch debate with interest and have gathered some statistics of my own which demonstrate that fuel watch in WA can be used to save costs on petrol.

I watch the fuel cycles and generally try and buy when it is at its lowest point. I will provide some figures below which show the average amount I paid per month per litre for fuel in the 10 months from April 2007 to March 2008. Note this includes my 4c per litre discount vouchers which I’ve indicated below. I will also show the average monthly figure from Fuel Watch. The reason that I have shown 10 months only is that I was on holidays for two months last year.

He goes on to list the comparison:

His list continues:

As he indicated:

I should add that generally I also have a Coles/Woolworths/IGA shopping voucher which gives me an additional 4c per litre discount so to accurately compare my average cost with fuel watchs figure you would need to add 4c per litre to my monthly cost. However, in all cases this is still quite a bit cheaper.

I think this demonstrates that if you are prepared to shop around, although the price of petrol is extravagant, you can get it cheaper if you shop wisely. The opposition do not appear to take this into consideration in any of the comments they make.

For members opposite, that is a practical example from one consumer in Western Australia who has used FuelWatch to ensure that he buys his fuel at the lowest price possible and, as a consequence, has made substantial savings on the purchase of fuel. He goes on to talk about when he was away for a couple of months, in April-May:

Another interesting fact is that in April/May this year a group of four couples from WA went on a caravanning trip to the eastern states.

I might interpose there that we in the west generally refer to everything to our right, on that side of the country, as the ‘eastern states’. He went on:

We were amazed to see how the prices for petrol changed so drastically on the one day. A couple of examples are in Ballarat it was 139.5 in the morning and about 150.1 in the afternoon and in Heathcote, just out of Sydney, it was 139.5 at about 4pm and 6pm the same day it was 153.5.

That is one practical example, and I thank Chris White for that. Perhaps those comments about the eastern states might explain in some way the lack of understanding of members opposite about how the Fuelwatch scheme is intended to operate. I again thank Chris White for his contribution and I look forward to receiving further information from him on the daily fuel price comparisons if this debate continues. This is a clear example, as I have said, of how consumers can benefit from the Fuelwatch scheme and it also demonstrates in bold terms why I cannot understand the position of members opposite in opposing the Fuelwatch scheme.

I have also been critical of the media debate on Fuelwatch and its apparent lack of understanding of the scheme. Again, that may be a reflection of the fact that the majority of national papers and the national debate come from the eastern states—not that my own state’s paper can hold its head up high in that regard. But I was pleased to see one article, published on 29 May 2008, from Malcolm Maiden, a writer at the Sydney Morning Herald, because as I read it I thought, ‘Finally, one of our journalist colleagues has got it!’ His headline was ‘FuelWatch will put consumers in the driving seat’. Frankly, that is the bottom line: it is about empowering consumers to make informed decisions when they are purchasing their fuel. He talked about the ‘divergent opinions’ that had been put to the ACCC, who have conducted the most detailed inquiry into whether or not the WA scheme ‘promoted competition, or stifled it by locking prices up for to 24 hours’. He said:

... the ACCC’s report was loaded with caveats, about the absence of demonstrable cause and effect between the scheme and petrol prices, risks associated with the potentially process-heavy cost of a national rollout and its relatively minor influence on petrol prices.

But he went on:

It nevertheless concluded that FuelWatch was unlikely to hurt petrol consumers and might help them—not just because there was qualified evidence from the West Australian scheme that it worked to push prices down but because the system allowed price discovery, and, for those who work the system to its fullest, about a half a day in which to fill up ahead of posted price rises: score one for the Rudd Government.

When you finally understand it, the essence of the scheme is about putting consumers in the driver’s seat. It is about promoting competition and transparency in the retail petrol industry. And for those who are feeling the pinch, it empowers them with the opportunity to purchase fuel at the lowest price whenever they choose to purchase that fuel.

There has been much criticism about the ACCC report on the FuelWatch scheme, in particular of its assessment of how it operates in Western Australia. I think this is incredibly unfortunate because the criticism seemed to completely omit the fact that the ACCC was the only organisation that undertook substantial econometric analysis of how the scheme works in Western Australia. The ACCC report concluded, in comparing relative prices between Perth and the eastern states before and after the introduction of FuelWatch, that prices in Perth were around 1.9 c per litre less on average for the period January 2001 to June 2007 than for the period August 1998 to December 2000. It seems to me that nobody else has been able to refer to any independent advice that in any way undermines the findings of that ACCC report.

I think it is outrageous for the member for Cowper and others opposite to come in here and describe Fuelwatch as a ‘fraud’ or a ‘confidence hoax’ and to lecture members of the government about why they were sent to Canberra. I will just say this: the people who sent me to Canberra expect me to behave honestly and to hear honesty from me, not rhetoric and populist policy. And I say to members opposite: who benefits if you kill off Fuelwatch? It certainly will not be ordinary consumers in Australia as they go about their business and meet their need to purchase fuel.

I do not intend to belabour the point today because I have spoken a couple of times on this matter in debates, including in the matter of public importance debate the other day. I have talked about the popularity of the scheme in Western Australia. The mere fact that it is shown on commercial television during the news broadcasts each night is great evidence of the fact that it is a highly popular scheme in Western Australia, and I think the information I have provided from Mr White demonstrates how an informed consumer is empowered by a scheme like Fuelwatch. I urge members opposite to move on from their rhetoric and their populist posturing and support something which gives consumers in this country real power when it comes to purchasing their petrol.

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