Page 3617 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
But the price of petrol in Perth in that period was 77.4c per litre. So, it was 4c lower in the tax rate, with the price at 77.4c. The price in Adelaide was 71.9c. Hang on; what is going on here? We have petrol prices some 4c higher in Perth than in Adelaide and we have taxes some 4c lower in Perth than in Adelaide. Mr Humphries says, "The tax level determines the price that the consumer pays". It does not make sense, Mr Humphries. Not much of what the Liberals say does; but that certainly does not.
As the Chief Minister said and as the Industry Commission has proved, the determinant of the retail price is the level of competition in the marketplace. This Labor Government has taken on that market, has driven competition into this marketplace and has now, with the calling for expressions of interest for the release of those additional sites, pretty much unalterably produced in the Canberra market a dynamic of competition which will mean that Canberra consumers will continue to see benefit. Those Canberra consumers who, in October, were heading away for the long weekend saw the countercyclical effect. Traditionally, the prices go up on a long weekend. This time they went down. At the coast, traditionally, the price was about the same. What was the price of petrol around the coast, around country New South Wales, over that October long weekend? It was about 73c or 74c - the sort of price that Canberra motorists had always paid before we became competitive, the sort of price that Canberra motorists would pay again if the competition were driven out of this market, as the Liberals would have it. The price of petrol at the coast on that October long weekend was around 74c - some 7c to 8c higher than the price of petrol in Canberra - at the same rate of tax as in the ACT. (Extension of time granted)
What does Mr Humphries want to do? Does he want to abolish the tax altogether, as his rhetoric would seem to have it? We were talking yesterday about what you can read from parliamentary debates about true intention. Does he want to abolish the 3c? Does he want to abolish the 0.16c? He came in here and said, "It is very clear from the Subordinate Laws Act that, when you repeal a regulation, you can revive the previous regulation". If, in fact, what he had done was what he did last year, which was to try to knock out the whole regulation, it would be abundantly clear that, by knocking out the whole regulation that the Chief Minister introduced, the whole previous regulation would come back. What he has done is to take advantage of the ability we now have to amend and be more specific, where you can knock out parts of regulations or parts of determinations. He has drafted his motion in such a way that it seeks not to repeal the whole regulation so that it would be unarguably clear that the previous regulation was reinstated; he has sought to delete one schedule.
The regulation imposes a range of taxes on petroleum and alcohol. It imposes taxes as a percentage of volume of petroleum and on various dealers fees and licence fees, which are $10 a month and $50 a month. It is a quite complex range of taxes. You could quite easily evince from what Mr Humphries has done that he could have knocked out the whole thing clearly to bring back the pre-existing regime; but what he has instead chosen to do is very specifically to delete Schedule 1. From that, you could quite easily evince his intention. What he did was to keep all the other taxes but delete Schedule 1; that is, he decided to delete a petroleum excise per litre of volume sales, so it could be somewhat vague. He comes in and makes it very clear, we think, that he would expect the previous tax to revive; but it is not as simple as he says it is. In fact, if he had wanted it to be that clear, it would have been better to use the broadaxe.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .