Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, the government has a petrol commissioner, created Fuelwatch and talked about applying a blowtorch to oil-producing nations, yet petrol is now on average at least 25c a litre more expensive since the federal election last year. The Australian people want to know this, Mr Prime Minister: when will the government stop talking about petrol prices and start doing something about them?

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

One of the interesting things about those opposite in their consistent campaign of negativity on fuel prices is that they do not have sustainable long-term policies on this question. On the one they have put forward we now have four variations of it. We have that one put forward by the Leader of the Opposition. We have another one put forward now by the campaign director for the member for Higgins. We now have a new one put forward by the Leader of the National Party. Then we have the member for Wentworth’s position, which is not (a) (b) or (c) above, and when the alternative leader of the Liberal Party assumes the leadership of the Liberal Party it will be ‘tick the box’ in terms of which of these particular measures might be embraced by those opposite.

We have put forward a range of positive policies when it comes to dealing with families and individuals under financial pressure. We have also dealt in the policy domain on the question of fuel efficient cars. We have assisted where we can on the question of greater competition power for consumers. We have also established a petrol price commissioner to ensure that there is appropriate competition policy pressure applied to the oil producers.

On the prices just mentioned by the honourable member in the framing of her question, I would simply draw her attention to remarks I made at the end of last week which referred to price variations in metro Sydney in one day of up to 20c a litre and of between 9c and 16c a litre in one suburb or in an area surrounding a suburb. The question I again put to those opposite is: should it not be the case that Australian motorists should have access through Fuelwatch to that information in a time-real way on the same day so that they can shop around for the best deal for petrol? That is what we offer. Those opposite choose to block that measure in the Senate because those opposite are standing on the same side as the big oil companies and against the interests of Australia’s average motorist.