Page 3468 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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Frankly, Madam Speaker, the only way Canberra consumers will get a fair deal for their petrol consuming needs is for Labor to withdraw their iniquitous increase in petrol tax, whether it is a Federal Labor tax or a State Labor tax.
Some discussion of the extraordinary tax burden on motorists is highly appropriate in dealing with this motion today. Today in Canberra petrol is priced at 76.9c per litre. Of this, a massive 40.8c per litre is paid as tax to the Federal and local Labor governments. The taxation on petrol now represents a total of 53 per cent of the total price that motorists pay at the bowser. Fancy the Government pointing the finger at somebody else. That burden, Madam Speaker, is unacceptable. The burden from the ACT Government alone stands at 7c of that 76.9c per litre, or 9.2 per cent of the total price of petrol. Once, motorists used to fill their tanks, getting a lot of petrol and paying a little bit of tax. Now, they pay a lot of tax and get a little bit of petrol. It seems to me outrageous.
The Government, which is part of a cartel, in effect, which systematically rips off consumers half the price they pay for petrol, really has not much credibility when it comes to criticising petrol retailers and oil companies for the prices they charge for their products. Fuel products are one of the few products on the market where governments get over half the retail price remitted to them as taxation when they provide none of the product. They disguise their taxes by calling them business franchise fees, government royalties, product excise, resource rent and the like. Ultimately, of course, they are taxes. As the Chief Minister herself noted in 1990, taxes of this kind have a major impact, particularly on businesses in the ACT. They have a major impact on the way in which those businesses can do their business and employ people. I have said before - and I continue to say it - that, every time Canberra motorists fill their tanks with petrol and go in to pay the bill at the counter in the service station, standing next to the attendant, with hands reaching into their pockets, are Ms Follett and Mr Dawkins.
While so many Canberra consumers grow angrier and angrier at the price of petrol in this town, with some justification, their anger is often taken out on the retailer. I have had countless calls from retailers saying that they are sick of having motorists abusing them for the increase in petrol prices when in reality they are doing the Government's dirty work for them. It is worth looking at the breakdown of the 76.9c a litre that people are paying for petrol in the ACT. Of the price, 43.4 per cent is going to the Commonwealth Government in resource rent tax, royalties and product excise, and 9.2 per cent is going by way of a so-called business franchise fee to the ACT Government, making a total government-type grab of 52.6 per cent. The oil companies are getting 40.8 per cent of the total price - less, I might note, than the Federal Government gets - and the retailers, the object of so much ire from this Minister opposite in recent months, get a grand total of 5c a litre, which is 6.5 per cent of the total price that is paid at the bowser.
I hardly think the retailer deserves that much attention in this debate. There are a great many people who come ahead of him or her in the course of this debate. I am very concerned that Canberra's petrol stations are becoming revenue raising stations for the ACT Government. The problem with this scenario is that petrol stations are businesses and they should not have to wear the odium of decisions which are utterly beyond their control.
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