Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday in the Courier-Mail we saw reports about more petrol price rip-offs that the government does not seem interested in doing anything about. Fuel industry consultants FUELtrac were quoted as saying that the oil giants were adding an extra margin by consistently charging 2c to 3c a litre more for wholesale petrol in Queensland than in southern states. Geoff Trotter, the spokesman for FUELtrac, went on to say, ‘And we are not sure why.’ That is the question. We are not sure why because the government refuses to give the ACCC the powers it needs to explain why that is the case.

But of course that is only part of the story. That article in the Courier-Mail and our question to the Prime Minister yesterday were primarily about fuel prices in Brisbane. Yesterday the price for unleaded petrol in Brisbane was 123.9c per litre, but up in Rockhampton and the places around my electorate the cost per litre is much higher. In Rockhampton yesterday it was $1.28 a litre, in Blackwater it was $1.26, in Mackay it was $1.26 and in Moranbah it was $1.35.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

$1.22 in Townsville.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly. It is $1.22 in Townsville. There you go. These are places that are similar in nature. We have provincial centres, Mackay, Rockhampton and Townsville, and a couple of mining towns, Blackwater and Moranbah, and there is a complete diversity of prices between all these centres in regional Queensland. That is the thing that people in my electorate are continually asking for answers about. It is not just the higher price; it is also what is behind this discrepancy. Well might they ask, and it is the kind of question we asked of the Prime Minister in question time yesterday—and of course we did not receive a satisfactory answer.

The answer really is that the government continues to talk about petrol prices but refuses to take the tangible action that it could take to do something about it. The Prime Minister said on 12 May:

We will again ask the ACCC to look at these prices.

It is all about talking to the ACCC and looking at prices. But the fact is that at the moment the ACCC only informally monitors petrol prices. The Treasurer needs to write to the ACCC and request that it conduct a formal inquiry into petrol prices under part VIIA of the Trade Practices Act. For 11 years the Treasurer has refused to take that step. Obviously he does not care about how much petrol prices are hurting motorists in Australia, but the Labor Party does care about it. We understand that petrol expenses take up a large part of the family budget, so we in the Labor Party have said that we will give direction to the ACCC to formally monitor petrol prices. We will give the ACCC the power it needs to get behind whatever racket is happening in Central Queensland, as these petrol prices in Rockhampton are so much higher than—(Time expired)