Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to seek leave to speak to the matter. I was also caught by an unanticipated collapse in the speakers list.

Leave granted.

In other circumstances I possibly would have let things slide, but I did particularly want to put a few things on the record from a personal point of view and specifically as a senator for Queensland. I also am prepared to support this disallowance of the Petroleum Retail Marketing Sites Amendment Regulations 2006 (No. 1), although not for all of the same reasons that have been put forward by Senator Milne and Senator Joyce. I think there are other factors and I take a different view on some of the issues involved in this matter.

It is a difficult issue and it is, as I think Senator Stephens said, a situation of the government’s making, and it is an unfortunate one where we have regulation in place in anticipation of legislation repealing the Petroleum Retail Marketing Sites Act but the bill to do that is not before the Senate. It is still before the House of Representatives and indeed, as I understand it, it is not even likely to be debated by the House of Representatives before the parliament rises next week.

I could see the rationale if there were a range of leases coming up. A brief exemption from the cap under the existing act in anticipation of the bill being debated might then be tenable because it does put BP—and it is predominantly BP we are talking about—in a difficult situation. It is the only oil major at the moment, as I understand it, which is operating at the cap of allowable sites under the existing act. But when the legislation is so far off in the distance it does make it difficult. You basically have a regulation that negates the existing law indefinitely. If there was a sunset clause in the existing regulation, then it may be more acceptable. We would all know how long we had before the legislation had to be debated. But there is no sunset clause. That is a serious problem that the government themselves have created.

The fact that this regulation exempts or makes the existing act not operational in respect of the cap has an extra problematic aspect in that the oil code is not operational as yet. That has not been gazetted so even the protections, such as they are, under the new oil code—and there are a range of opinions about how effective the new oil code may be—do not apply as the new oil code is not yet in place. That also creates a problem, particularly in terms of the very serious issue of subverting the will of the parliament, even if it was the parliament of the 1980s that passed these acts back in the Fraser era.

Nonetheless, I want to indicate that I also support the intent of my colleague Senator Murray and Senator Joyce—and others who have mentioned it—about the desirability of bringing on some of the changes of the Trade Practices Act that were reflected in recommendations of a previous Senate committee report—recommendations that were also supported by government senators. The committee was chaired by Senator Brandis as I recall. I believe the government have indicated their preparedness or their support for a number of those recommendations—indeed most of them—but as I seem to find myself saying repeatedly in this place about a range of issues, it is one thing to say you support a matter and it is another thing to actually do something about it. We have not seen any sign at all of movement from the Treasurer’s office about any changes coming forward. It is a problematic situation when we have a regulation that links to an act that has not appeared, which in turn relates to concerns that many in this place have regarding recommended reforms of the Trade Practices Act which also have not appeared yet. Unfortunately, these are not all coming together at once. They are coming together in different stages and we cannot see what the final total outcome might be. That is the reason it is appropriate to support this disallowance at this time.

However, I want to say a couple of other things. It is important to emphasise the role that the major oil companies can play and, indeed, to some extent are already playing in the roll-out of alternative fuels—biofuels and ethanol. I do not believe that it will be a range of small independent operators that are likely to be able to really break the back of getting ethanol or other biofuels into the market in a big way; it will need to have the involvement of one or more of the major oil companies. As I mentioned before, it is BP that is affected by this regulation. It also happens to be BP that has done the most that I am aware of—I am not saying that others have not done anything—in relation to producing and rolling out ethanol in recent years. In my own state of Queensland, BP has a refinery in Brisbane at Bulwer Island and BP also owns a significant number of sites in Brisbane, where I live. While I appreciate the importance of having competition in regional areas and the importance of trying to maintain petrol prices that are reasonable, it is also important to have an effectively operating market in the major cities as well. It does need to be acknowledged that if major oil companies want to go further, and BP for example wants to take biofuels further, then market reform is likely to be essential for them to be able to do so.

The Democrats have a record as strong as anybody in supporting small business. But the fact is that small business and independent operators in the petrol station field have been declining dramatically under the existing system for many years and they are particularly being crunched at the moment, as we all know, by Coles and Woolies. They are doing that in conjunction with some of the other major oil companies who have basically just gone around the existing act. The fact is the existing act’s time has passed us by. The market has changed so much that the act is not functioning. Ironically, it is allowing people like Coles and Woolies to exert unfair competitive practices and preventing the oil companies from providing competition to those retailers. Coles and Woolies are doing quite well on their own in eliminating independent players from the market wherever they think there is a market opportunity to do so; where they do not, they will leave them alone.

So a huge decline in the number of independent retailers has occurred under the existing system. It is likely to continue to occur wherever there is an opportunity for the major retailers to maintain pressure on them. Whether or not you have one or two more oil companies, such as BP, in there is not likely to make any difference. I do think it is important that independents have a level playing field, and the existing system does not provide that. That is why Trade Practices Act reforms are important and, I would also say, why a good oil code—I will not pass opinion on whether the oil code that is coming in is good or not—is important.

I have heard all the talk about small retailers and independent retailers being important to maintain lower petrol prices. If we are talking about protecting small retailers and doing everything we can to keep them in business no matter what, then—sorry to suddenly sound like an economic rationalist—it will probably actually mean higher petrol prices. That may be a good thing from an environmental point of view, I hasten to add, but I do think we need to be realistic about what the impact of what we are doing will be.

I did want to indicate that wider aspect of the debate, particularly because the regulations do specifically affect my own state of Queensland quite significantly. I know that Senator Joyce, along with the Democrats, has been pushing biofuels and ethanol very strongly. Indeed, I have to say the Democrats have been doing so for much longer, going way back even before I was in this place to the early 1990s, when very significant initiatives were introduced, because of agreements reached with the Democrats, to provide assistance to starting up ethanol in this country—assistance, I might add, that was completely annihilated by the Howard government when they first came into office in 1996 and totally undid that work. Now we have to start up again because of the actions of the Howard government, having lost 10 years and, as Senator Murray said, with $25 million down the drain. We lost a significant start-up in developing an ethanol industry because of the Howard government’s actions 10 years ago. So our record on biofuels and ethanol is second to none in this place.

I do believe that the major companies have a significant role to play in expanding the use of biofuels. This is not a promotional spiel for BP, but BP have not just made nice sounds about this but done something, unlike the Howard government. They have developed a roll-out of ethanol. They have already sold significant amounts of their E10 blend, through their own service stations in Australia. If they are able to roll that out through a larger number of stations through market reform, then that will lead to an expansion of the availability of ethanol. BP have also—and this is already on the public record—announced that they will be creating biofuels at their Bulwer Island refinery in Brisbane. It is a biofuel made out of tallow, so it actually creates a bit of a problem for me as a vegetarian: I do not like the idea of pouring dead cows into my petrol tank. I will not get into an argument about what should and should not be defined as a biofuel, but this is nonetheless a biofuel: it is renewable and you can put it in a tank and run your car on it. Vegetarians around the country will have ethical crises as a consequence, but that is another matter.