Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill 2006. I do so with petrol prices soaring and Australian families battling to pay their petrol bills. Australians are more concerned than ever about record high petrol prices as we have seen global oil prices triple over the past three years. Reform of the petrol retail industry, including the repeal of the two acts dealt with in this bill, has never been more important.

Last year higher petrol prices meant Australians spent approximately $2.3 billion extra on petrol. To further demonstrate this point, I draw the Senate’s attention to an article published on 9 August in the Examiner newspaper in my home state of Tasmania which detailed the cost of living for families. Using Bureau of Statistics data, the article recreated an average family to illustrate family spending and pressures on the household budget. It said that an average family is made up of two parents and two children, aged nine and 12, has a combined take-home salary of $3,828 a month and is paying off a loan on an average family car. After meeting their mortgage expenses and paying for food, fuel, insurance and education, there is little money left over for this average family to spend on life’s luxuries. The article referred to, amongst other things, the impact of yet another interest rates rise and rising petrol prices. It said:

The biggest shock to families has been the rising price of petrol. The price of standard unleaded petrol has jumped from $1.18 to $1.45 in just a year, adding $59 a month to the budget.

This represents a massive change of 22.6 per cent in the household petrol budget from August 2005 to August 2006. This is on top of the average Tasmanian family paying at least $176 more a month for goods and services than they were paying in August last year. Tasmanians are paying 4.1 per cent more at the checkout, 5.8 per cent more on education costs and up to 5.8 per cent more on health costs, and the price of standard unleaded petrol has jumped from $1.18 to $1.45 in less than a year. These figures do not take into account the cost of child care—the latest available figures show that high-quality child care costs $260 a week in Tasmania—nor the impact on family-work balance of the government’s extreme Work Choices legislation.

I support Senator O’Brien’s comment that it is most worrying that the Howard-Costello government’s answer to everything, as reflected in the recent budget, is simply to spend, spend, spend. Unfortunately for average Tasmanians they are now forced to spend more on interest rate hikes, petrol and groceries. It has become blatantly obvious that the government has only two policies: sell and spend. The government wants to sell Telstra and Medibank Private, regardless of the cost to the community, and to spend its way out of trouble using taxpayers’ money.

The Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill 2006 repeals the outdated Petroleum Retail Marketing Franchise Act 1980 and the Petroleum Retail Sites Act 1980. These acts cover only part of the petrol retail industry; well over 50 per cent of the industry, by volume of sales, is not covered, including the supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths. The acts discriminate between large and small business, and the rules are inconsistent and unfair. More than 50 per cent of the industry, by volume, is not regulated at all. Petrol retail reform is a good step forward to give consumers more confidence, but reform, we also accept, has been a long time coming.

As has been stated by my colleagues, petrol reform has been on the Howard government’s policy agenda since 1996. In 1998 the opposition appropriately said that it would support petrol reform as long as the Oilcode was agreed to, but it has taken this government another eight years to get to that point. The Oilcode, which will be introduced as a mandatory industry code under section 51AE of the Trade Practices Act 1974, will finally and appropriately bring the industry into a common regulatory regime with better protections for market participants and consumers. The Oilcode will improve the protections available to commissioned agents and independent operators, who currently do not have the protections available to franchisees. Both franchisees and commissioned agents will also appropriately have access to a low-cost dispute resolution system for the first time.

I think we have to accept that there is no longer a capacity for short-term fixes. We need a national transport fuel policy that guarantees supplies for the long term and gives Australia options to deal with global fuel supply and price emergencies. That is the debate in Europe, that is the debate in North America, that is the debate in Asia; but unfortunately it is not the debate the Prime Minister wants in Australia, because it requires tough decisions and leadership.

Labor’s blueprint will provide a leading role in emerging energy sectors to boost our export performance and take advantage of opportunities in world markets. Labor wants to quash this threat of reliance and make Australia more self-sufficient in developing fuels that will become cheaper in the future. In October last year Kim Beazley launched Labor’s blueprint ‘Developing the Australian transport fuel industry’. I would like to quote from Kim Beazley’s address at the launch of the blueprint. He said:

If Australia is to grow, to prosper and be secure—we must be able to stand on our own two feet in the world—whether that be militarily, in counter terrorism, in educating our people, in providing decent health care, decent infrastructure or in keeping our economy strong.

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My aim, the aim of the Australian Labor Party is to develop a diversified Australian fuel industry. A diversified Australian fuel industry making Australia a more self sufficient country.

We must increase the use of Australian transport fuels and reduce our reliance on foreign oil. We must develop and use those fuels that will become cheaper in the future. More fuel–more types of fuel. Cleaner fuels—cheaper fuels—Australian fuels.

We need national leadership to develop:

• existing alternatives like liquid petroleum gas, ethanol and
• emerging alternatives such as compressed natural gas, liquid gas and stored electricity; and
• future fuels, such as hydrogen.

We also need to develop the technologies to make it happen. We do this because our transport fuel markets need a fresh blast of competition.

We must make Australia less vulnerable to external shocks.

We must make Australia less reliant on the foreign oil affecting our trade deficit and foreign debt.

We must play a leading role in emerging energy sectors to boost our export performance and take advantage of opportunities in world markets. We must invest in preserving our environment by diversifying our fuel base beyond petrol to biofuels and gas and hydrogen.

I am pleased to support the bill, which repeals, as I have said, two outdated pieces of legislation. I endorse the Labor amendments that seek to, and I echo the words of my colleagues in the House, Mr Martin Ferguson and Mr Fitzgibbon: (1) strengthen the ACCC’s powers to investigate petrol prices by removing the requirement that the ACCC needs the Treasurer’s consent; (2) strengthen the Trade Practices Act to provide greater scope for dealing with abuse of market power; (3) find more oil and use more gas in Australia by re-examining the depreciation regime for gas production infrastructure, allowing the selective use of flow-through share schemes for smaller operators, and conduct a feasibility study into converting gas into clean diesel in Australia; and (4) protect and promote the growth of ethanol, biodiesel, LPG and CNG by a 2009 review of the government’s plans to levy an excise on these fuels. The review will consider whether the excise should be deferred. I call on government senators to support Australian families and support Labor’s amendments aimed at strengthening the Trades Practices Act to protect against the abuse of market power and to address the rising cost of petrol. I commend the amendments to the Senate.