Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Finance, Competition Policy and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On indulgence, to start with, I understood that the Deputy Prime Minister had not completed her answer before, and I was waiting for her to get the call. That is by way of explanation to the House. My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to his own regulatory impact statement on Fuelwatch released reluctantly late last week. Specifically, I refer him to the statement:

... it remains unclear whether option one—

that is, Fuelwatch

would be successful in delivering lower retail petrol prices.

If the Prime Minister will not rule out higher petrol prices as a result of Fuelwatch, why is the Prime Minister preceding with bad legislation?

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

I draw the honourable member’s attention to the further econometric analysis undertaken by the ACCC, which was released last week, and its conclusions:

The purpose of this econometric analysis has been to satisfy the ACCC that the introduction of a Fuelwatch scheme nationally would not, based on the experience in Western Australia, lead to consumers paying higher prices for petrol.

From the econometric analysis, on a conservative basis, the ACCC can say that there is no evidence that the introduction of Fuelwatch in Western Australia led to any increase in prices and it appears to have resulted in a small price decrease overall.

The government’s position on this is as we have said before: based on this advice from the ACCC, drawing from the WA experience and based on this econometric modelling, the advice which was provided to us is that this actually represents up to a 2c a litre advantage to motorists. Secondly, and most importantly, it gives motorists choice. Within a metro area, where you have price variations on a given day of between 15c and 20c a litre, the consumer should have the same choice as the big oil companies. That is, consumers should have the power and information available to them to make the choices about where to get the best price for the day. Whereas those opposite argue that that power should uniquely be held by big oil, we stand up for consumer choice. Those opposite stand up for big oil.