Page 2425 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2022
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(2) notes that the ACT Government will continue negotiating with NSW on extending NSW FuelCheck to the ACT so that the high proposed cost of expanding the scheme can be appropriately addressed; and
(3) calls on the Commonwealth Government to adopt Euro VI standards and emissions standards for new vehicles that would reduce fuel costs and save motorists $8500 over the life of a light vehicle.”.
For reasons that I think have been well canvassed, fuel prices have increased across the nation—and they have here in the ACT—and this does place a significant cost of living expense on many road users, businesses and families. We are not immune to rising fuel costs. As a nation, obviously, we are perhaps more prone than many others to international market conditions. We are an island within New South Wales. There are, of course, many people who cross the ACT-New South Wales border on a frequent basis and many drive past multiple service stations.
The government has a multi-pronged approach to addressing above national average increases and consistently above national average prices in the ACT. Members may recall that, following the 2019 committee inquiry, I wrote to every major fuel retailer in the ACT more than once to put them on notice that the government was closely monitoring fuel prices in a weekly cycle, that we considered that retail margins were unnecessarily high in the territory and that we could use powers under the Fair Trading (Fuel Prices) Act 1991 to introduce price regulation if our concerns were not addressed.
The response from retailers at that time, in the midst of the pandemic, was to see petrol prices fall quite dramatically. At one point they were below a dollar a litre. That has obviously changed now, in different global circumstances. We have called out the retailers and the fuel companies on price gouging before and we will do it again. It would appear that prices, although starting a downward trend in Canberra in recent weeks, have been slower in that trend than in some other cities.
So I have again written to all of the major fuel retailers operating in the ACT, pointing out that fact and requiring them to explain. I indicated, as I have done before, that they should reduce their prices in line with what are acceptable retail margins in the market—and the benchmark that we are looking at here is the average price in Australia, which takes into account all of the different transport variables, in terms of moving fuel from one part of the country to another—and that Canberra prices should be at or below the national average.
In the deliberation of the select committee, the issue of apps did come up, and the committee recommended that the ACT government investigate the feasibility of extending the FuelCheck scheme. So we have been doing that. We have engaged with the New South Wales government to explore the possible extension of the New South Wales FuelCheck scheme, and that app and the existing architecture. To add another 50-odd service stations to that makes the most sense, particularly given that it is quite expensive to create a standalone fuel monitoring scheme for a jurisdiction of our size. Expanding FuelCheck would have some potential benefits for Canberrans. It would make a third app available for people to check prices.
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