Page 2078 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 June 1993
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I have here a letter from a petrol company that says, "We increased the wholesale prices on 29 April by 0.2c, on 30 May by 0.3c, on 3 June by 0.5c and on 10 June by 0.53c, as agreed by the Prices Surveillance Authority". The poor old service station operator or proprietor is in the middle. He has absorbed 2c per litre since 29 April, and after 10 June, which was the straw that broke the camel's back, he could not resist any longer putting up his prices. Would you rather have all those service stations go broke and those people out of work? That is the sort of humbug you people purvey.
For heaven's sake, you have never put your last dollar on the line and fought for it and tried to build a business or do anything like that. You people over there ought to go out in the real world and fight for your dollar instead of having it handed to you. I know what it is to go and fight for a dollar. I can buy a bankrupt company losing $3,000 a day and have it profitable in a matter of six months. That is the real world. You people do not understand the real world. You are ideologues. You have ideological blinkers on. How can a service station operate on 2.75 per cent margin of profit?
Mr Berry: But it is not per annum.
MR WESTENDE: Per litre on price. At 70c - - -
Mr Connolly: They are operating at five-and-a-half.
MR WESTENDE: I am sorry, my dear friend, you cannot even do your sums. They are making 4.8c a litre at 70c a litre. That equates to a 2.75 per cent profit margin. Do your sums. I do. In the Minister's statement yesterday he said:
... it is necessary to encourage the strong independent petrol retailers into the market as they can extract discounts from suppliers because of the strength of their position ...
The Minister, by his own words, is admitting that he has to control the suppliers, not the poor old service station. I suggest to the Minister that before he controls petrol prices he have another think about what his statement said and do something about the supplier. The supplier's price is already regulated by the Prices Surveillance Authority.
I am sorry, Minister; I cannot agree with your assumption that we need the Fair Trading (Fuel Prices) Bill 1992 adopted in order to control prices. There are other ways. You should have thought of that when you accepted $3m or $4m for a service station site when the same site could be bought across the border in Hall for $100,000. What do you want us to do? Send everybody across to Hall? You miss out on your fuel excise. You miss out on the 3c that you were going to take off. If you are so damned adamant about reducing petrol costs, why do you not start with taking the 3c off? Why do you not start with reducing all the oncosts - payroll tax, workers compensation? It was not until Bjelke-Petersen reduced death duties to zero that all the other States in Australia followed. You should set an example. Lead and let the other States follow.
I am sorry, Mr Minister; you will not convince me - and I have had some experience in business - that people who operate at a margin of 2.75 per cent are profiteering. That is absolute humbug. They are not profiteering; they are barely surviving. I wish you would have second thoughts about this. I heard the
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