Page 1048 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 April 1994
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This report is for the use only of the party to whom it is addressed and for no other parties. No responsibility is accepted to any third party who may use or rely on the whole or any part of the content of this report.
Here we have this report, paid for by the Motor Trades Association, expressly saying in its final paragraph:
This report is for the use only of the party to whom it is addressed and for no other parties.
Yet here we have it faxed to the Liberal Party and waved around in the ACT Assembly today. These people have no shame, Madam Speaker. I welcome your going out into the community and saying, "Vote Liberal, because we will defend the petrol cartels. Vote Liberal, because we will put petrol back to 75c a litre", which is the price that people were paying in Canberra before we intervened and is the price - - -
Mr De Domenico: Whom does your Government defend?
MR CONNOLLY: Our Government defends the consumers and the small businesses of Canberra, who are paying less for petrol. People around Australia who were paying the same price as Canberra residents for petrol - country residents of New South Wales who were paying 76c a litre, as we were when we announced the Burmah deal - are still paying 76c a litre. This Labor Government brought down petrol prices. I apologise for raising my voice, but it was necessary to be heard over the rabble emanating from the benches opposite.
Madam Speaker, I note that this report commissioned and paid for by the Motor Trades Association claims that you could have got a rental of 7c a litre. I find that extraordinary, because the Motor Trades Association of Australia, in its submission to the ACT Government Working Group on Petrol Prices - I do not have that document here, but I will get it and ensure that I table it in due course - indicated that around 2c was about the right operating margin. When we went to an independent valuer - we went to the Australian Valuation Office - and they said that 1.8c was fair, that seemed to be within the ballpark of what the Motor Trades Association had said was fair, given the peculiar nature of this site and given not only the offset of improvements but also the factor that we are not talking about any opportunity to build up goodwill in a business because it is a three- to five-year licence, not a long-term lease. We thought that 1.8c was in the ballpark of the MTAA's original statement, so we thought it was fair.
This report by McCann and Associates, paid for by the MTAA, which says 7c, indicates a rate that is over three times what the Motor Trades Association told us was the prevailing rate. Things must have dramatically altered in the market between when the Motor Trades Association told us what they thought they were paying and when it was necessary to do a job on Burmah.
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