Page 2080 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 June 1993
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As Mrs Carnell quite rightly said, if Mr Connolly can guarantee ACT retailers enough margin for them to pay off their debts and to make their financial contributions, everybody will be happy; but Mr Connolly cannot do that. Well, he could do it, but he will not do it.
Mr Connolly stood up here in this house and said that, because the levy in New South Wales is higher than in the ACT, the 3c per litre cannot be taken off. That is not right. Be innovative, as Mrs Carnell said.
Mr Connolly: All I am saying is that that has no impact on the price in Canberra.
MR DE DOMENICO: Why will it not have any impact on the price in Canberra? Who pays the 3c per litre levy?
Mr Connolly ought to realise that in April 1984, for example, a site in Belconnen sold at $1.26m. Anybody who bought that, whether it was a big oil company or, more importantly, a local retailer, had to service the loan that could enable him or her to pay $1.265m in 1984. What amount of money is going to be paid into the ACT coffers now, with the Government's silly idea of saying, "We will get an independent guy. We will give him the prime site on the Tuggeranong expressway, for example, and hope to high heaven that he is going to charge a competitive price"? Do you know what he will do, Mr Connolly? He will charge a price that will set the market standard, and that price will probably be higher than anybody else is charging because of the volume of traffic that is going past, although he might sell at a lesser price for one or two weeks.
I will tell you what is going to happen, Mr Connolly. He will not be independent for very long. What will happen, Mr Connolly, is that you will give him the land for nothing, he will make a roaring profit for one or two years, and then he will be bought out by a big oil company. Mr Connolly will say, "Oh, no; we will put in the lease a little clause that says that you cannot buy it if you are a big oil company". Mr Connolly, I say to you that there will be 49 million lawyers who will pick so many holes in that sort of situation that you will not know what hit you. The only people that are going to miss out in this situation, if we support your Bill, are those local ACT retailers that will go broke.
What are you going to do? What is your alternative? Let us set a price and say, "You shall not charge any more than 76c per litre, or 77c, or 75c". Someone might be able to drive to New South Wales, get a price at a discount on what it is now, and still charge 75c a litre. Let me tell you that that is the history of what happened in Western Australia when rack prices were set, and also in Victoria, and I think you know that.
As far as I am concerned, this legislation will do nothing except make retailers in the ACT go broke and it will not bring down petrol prices in the long term. The ones we want to help are those local retailers, not the big conglomerates. There is nothing you or any other government has been able to do about it in the history of the world, I say to you, Mr Connolly. If you want to take on the big oil companies, we are right behind you. Let us take on the big oil companies, but tell us how you are going to take them on. That is where the problem lies, not with the local retailers. As we have been saying on this side of the house, the wholesale price is set by the Prices Surveillance Authority. If you want to abolish that body, go ahead and lobby for it, and we will be right behind you as well.
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