Page 3467 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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Mr Connolly: No. They have chosen to do that.
MR HUMPHRIES: No. That clearly is what the Act says. You do not look at what has been collected in the month in which the tax is actually payable; you look at the period two months beforehand. The Chief Minister just acknowledged that fact. You cannot do that without making some compensating - - -
Ms Follett: The new tax still applies from 1 November.
MR HUMPHRIES: You cannot make that adjustment without compensating for the amount that you are collecting from the consumer.
Madam Speaker, such a debacle even spurred the Minister for Consumer Affairs into breaking his media silence on 1 October to blame - you guessed it - the oil companies for the price rise. I was contacted on 30 September by several retailers, one of whom provided me with a copy of the directive he had received from his company which told him that the Prices Surveillance Authority, which appears to be much less informed about what goes on in the ACT than does the ACT Government, had approved the increases effective from the opening of business on Friday, 1 October 1993. The Prices Surveillance Authority confirmed to my office that afternoon that they had approved this price rise on the basis that the business franchise fee increase would become effective on 1 October 1993 for payments to be made on 1 November 1993.
Ms Follett: They were wrong.
MR HUMPHRIES: The ACT Government knows better than the Federal Government's Prices Surveillance Authority! I admire your courage, Chief Minister. The fact of life is that the practice of previous years has been to increase the fee for the month preceding the month in which the increase is actually collected. The Chief Minister knows that that has been the practice. The Minister for Consumer Affairs, so called, knows that that is the practice. He conceded that that was the case in the Estimates Committee hearing. The fact of life is that it has always been the practice in the ACT, has it not? It has always been the practice to collect it a month in advance, has it not?
Mr Connolly: We have never had an increase. What was the previous increase? You tell us about that. You were in Cabinet then. How much was it?
MR HUMPHRIES: That may be. I will come later on to the increase that you condemned, Mr Connolly. The fact of life is that Mr Connolly knows and Ms Follett knows that it has always been the practice to increase that fee from the month before.
Madam Speaker, during debate on the Fair Trading (Fuel Prices) Bill early last year, and again this year, the Assembly debated at length the merits or otherwise of imposing government price control on petrol. In his conclusion to the debate Mr Connolly said:
The Government has proposed a range of moves to intervene in this market, which will, in the Government's view, result in a lowering of petrol prices and a fair deal for Canberra consumers.
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