WE’RE NOT APPY

Fuel companies laugh as state dithers on price monitoring

FROM December, fuel retailers will have to report petrol price changes within 30 minutes, but this is cold comfort for motorists being stung right now at the pumps.

The price changes will legally have to be made available to smartphone apps and websites but it is a two-year trial and retailers caught flouting the rules will not be penalised until April.

The State Opposition has joined the chorus of discontent and can see no reason why the laws can’t be rolled out sooner, as they are in other states.

Deputy Opposition leader Tim Mander said: “If they were serious they would do it immediately. In Queensland we pay the highest prices in the country which is why realtime fuel-price monitoring works in other states.”

STATE and Gold Coast Opposition MPs are urging Queensland Government to fast-track its real-time fuel-pricing plan for the sake of motorists “ripped off” at the bowser.

Queenslanders typically pay the highest prices in the country – and $6 more on average per tank than motorists in NSW which has a real-time petrol pricemonitoring policy.

Public anger at fluctuating prices is rising fast with more than 55,000 motorists nationwide saying they will join Facebook-led a National Fuel Strike on October 26.

RACQ spokeswoman Lucinda Ross said boycotting stations for a day wouldn’t impact price but regularly avoiding sites with higher prices would.

“If all drivers only gave their business to the cheapest servos, we’d send a very strong message to those charging high prices that we won’t cop it,” she said.

On the Gold Coast yesterday, the RACQ Fair Fuel tool estimated a “fair” price per litre was $1.499 for unleaded with some stations as low as $1.439 and others above $1.60.

LNP’s Member for Surfers Paradise John-Paul Langbroek said he was stung almost $1.70 per litre driving back from Brisbane to the Coast yesterday.

He baulked and stopped at $30, saying he’d fill the rest of his tank when he found a cheaper price.

“These companies are gouging Australians. When the Australian dollar is weak – which it supposedly is at present – petrol goes up, but it’s not that weak.

“It seems they are gouging through school holidays and the lead-up to public holidays and no one does anything about it.”

Earlier this year, the State Government committed to a trial for real-time fuel monitoring. From December, it will require retailers to report petrol price changes within 30 minutes, which will have to be made available to smartphone apps and websites.

But the Opposition are critical it is a two-year trial with a grace period from fines until April for retailers who fail to comply.

Deputy Opposition leader Tim Mander said: “We called on the State Government to introduce fuel price monitoring six months ago and dragged them kicking and screaming to agree.

“Now it is not until December and even then they are only doing a trial – so they are not fair dinkum. If they were serious they would do it immediately.”

RACQ’s Ms Ross said prices in south-east Queensland were falling right now but she anticipated the next price hike could go to the “highest levels we’ve ever seen”.

WHETHER a national fuel strike by drivers can achieve anything is highly debatable.

If it is meant to send a message of consumer discontent to retailers, then chances are it will be shrugged off. Even assuming drivers embrace the one-day campaign and overcome the habit of buying only when the fuel warning light flicks on, fuel companies are still likely to win because motorists will fill up in the days before or immediately after.

There is a better solution. In NSW, an app that provides real-time fuel prices has given consumers a valuable aid in limiting what they pay. NSW drivers can now fork out about $6 less for a tank.

Retailers and the Australian Institute of Petroleum like to talk about the retail price cycle, and even the body that looks after the interests of Gold Coast motorists, the RACQ, refers to the discounting cycle.

So whenever challenged about holiday spikes in prices – and we have to expect one with the Queen’s Birthday weekend looming – the fuel companies argue these are simply a pause in the “discounting”.

What discounting? Given the shock in the increase in fuel prices over the past year, these people have no shame in trying to infer prices that could head for $1.70 a litre are somehow doing us a favour. Even the better rates around town yesterday, from $1.45 to $1.50, would have brought howls of outrage not that long ago.

If a consumer strike is also intended as a shot across the bow of the Federal Government and Opposition, it must be reinforced with intense lobbying of MPs by constituents if there is to be a slim chance Canberra might listen. The problem for motorists is that the bodies they would normally look to for leadership in containing prices have spent decades washing their hands of what drivers pay for fuel.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is adamant its role is not to set prices. These flow from the market, it says. That is true to a point. The domestic “market” comprises retailers, wholesalers, refiners and distributors that contribute about 12 per cent of the cost.

But every time the motorist stops at the bowser, Canberra is taking fuel excise of 38.14 cents a litre regardless of the retail price and then grabbing an additional 10 per cent in GST – all up, about 38 per cent of what the driver pays. Can consumers really expect federal action when petrol is the goose that’s laying untold golden eggs?

About 50 per cent of what is charged comes from the international price of refined fuel, based on a Singapore benchmark because it is the closest major marketing and refining centre and is the common source of the 40 per cent of fuel Australia has to import. The other problem for Aussies is the fact oil and petrol are traded in US dollars and our dollar has not been faring that well.

But the blowtorch of voter scrutiny applied to the belly of federal MPs in a volatile political climate could achieve something.

And then there is the Queensland Government. Typically, it has ordered a “trial”, starting in December, of what NSW has already shown to work. Just for once, can’t the State make a decision without the bureaucratic bull? Drivers want relief now, not down the track. A “trial” has already been conducted by NSW. Just bring it on.