Page 2995 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 September 1994
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In fact, the number, as I put it, was 19, not 30. Not all of those will perhaps go because of the ramifications of the decision to bring Burmah in. I am not saying that it is black and white that it is all going to be attributed to that one cause; but it is irrefutable that a number of our small service stations are going to go out of business because they cannot continue under the present arrangements that flowed from the decision to bring Burmah Fuels in.
Those service stations that close will generally be in our small suburban shopping centres, and that introduces a ripple effect. If you close a service station in a small suburban shopping centre, what are the ramifications for the other businesses in that shopping centre? It was put to us that the service station brings in there a lot of people who otherwise would not come. So there is a flow-on, a ripple effect. I am not sure that the Government and the Minister really understood that that was going to happen, and I do not think they really understood the full ramifications.
We have said that we are not sure that the Minister really understood, although he claimed that he did. I do not believe that he did. In fairness to Mr Connolly, whom I believe to be an honourable man, I do not believe that he would have made the decision that he did if he had fully understood the ramifications and the impact that that decision was going to have on our small business people. The Government says constantly that it is committed to the small business sector in this Territory because that is where job creation takes place. I believe them. I do not believe that that is being said idly, and I do not believe that Mr Connolly, in good conscience, could have taken the decision that he did if he had fully understood where the burden was going to fall.
The majority of the committee thought that there were some things that the Government should think about in consequence of that. For example, we have said that there are other ways in which a longer-term price reduction in petrol could be achieved. One of them, on the evidence given to us, was to use the legislation that the Assembly passed at the Attorney-General's request only approximately a year ago and, by ministerial determination, to fix a wholesale price at which petrol in the ACT can be sold. He has that power. He asked us for the legislation and we gave it to him. But he has not chosen to use it. He could do that, and he could simply say that the wholesale price at which petrol can be sold in the ACT will be 3c a litre below the rack price which applies in Sydney or Melbourne. That would instantly reduce the price of petrol at the retail level by 3c a litre.
There are other ways. In 1990 the Alliance Government put a temporary 3c a litre franchise tax on petrol, the proceeds of which were to go to the reconstruction costs of the hospital system. It was to be taken off a year ago, in 1993. The Government did not take it off. If it took 3c a litre off, the price of petrol would drop by 3c a litre. It would not affect the majors, because they do not get it now; it would not affect the small business people, because that 3c a litre does not stay in their pockets now; but the price of petrol would reduce by 3c a litre. They are two ways in which the Government can go about effecting a long-term price reduction.
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