The Gold Coast Bulletin

FIGHTBACK IN YOUR HANDS

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QUEENSLAND’S peak motoring body has urged drivers to boycott greedy fuel retailers who are ripping them off blind.

But it is a fact that motorists are often their own worst enemy.

An RACQ spokeswoma­n at the weekend called on motorists to use people power and avoid the servos that are consistent­ly slugging them. The Bulletin agrees.

Petrol stations have been cynically belting the public across southeast Queensland throughout the festive season and now into the start of the school year, knowing they have a captive market. Howls of outrage last year when prices rocketed toward $1.50 a litre eventually calmed down, largely due to drivers shrugging and deciding they had little choice but to cop it.

There were suggestion­s the price would ease back once Christmas and New Year were out of the way, but here we are – late January 2018 and, with families out on the road in force for the start of the school year yesterday, prices on the Gold Coast were in an average range of $1.45-$1.49.9.

Government­s are coy about becoming too involved in the outrage. The State wants Canberra to cop the flak. Canberra pretends to look the other way. But government­s benefit from fuel prices through excise, charged at 38.6 cents a litre, and of course the 10 per cent GST.

Where government­s are showing a lack of interest in protecting consumers, it is up to the public to use their only effective weapons – taking their business elsewhere, and jumping online to check fuel-tracking websites that reveal which servos are cheapest and those that charge top dollar.

The trouble is, commuters are either time poor and do not have the luxury of leaving the main arterial roads to hunt for cheaper fuel, or allow their tanks to be almost empty in the hope prices will drop and then have to pay a premium when the yellow fuel warning light comes on.

They have to organise themselves. Until they start hurting the rip-off merchants, little will change.

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