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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (20 June) . . Page.. 2254 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

to the Treasurer that allows the Treasurer to consider-and, if he considers it desirable, authorise-payment to the Auditor-General of an additional amount under the Treasurer's Advance.

Amendments agreed to.

Bill, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Australian Bureau of Statistics-unpaid work statistics

Notice of motion

Notice No 6, private members business, having been called on and the member not being present, the notice was withdrawn from the notice paper, pursuant to standing order 127.

Fair Trading (Fuel Prices) Amendment Bill 2001

MS TUCKER (10.07): This bill is a follow-on to amendments passed some 18 months ago to establish temperature correction of wholesale deliveries of fuel. This was to take into account the fact that petroleum products change their volume according to changes in temperature. This is a particular issue in Canberra, as our fuel supplies all come from warmer climates than ours, meaning that the volume of fuel will shrink from when it is loaded in a fuel truck in Sydney, say, to when it is put in the service station's tanks in Canberra. Without temperature correction of the price of the fuel, the service station operator would end up paying for a proportion of fuel that cannot be sold.

I understand that the act has been effective in ensuring that service stations are fairly compensated for their fuel losses. However, some oil companies are abusing the law by not providing enough information on their delivery dockets about temperature correction and by applying an additional charge to their franchised service stations for compliance with this law, a charge which is not applied to fuel delivered to their own service stations.

This bill fixes up these problems to ensure that all service stations are treated equally in how they are charged for their fuel. This will help ensure fair trading across service stations, which is worthy of support. The Greens are happy to support this bill.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education and Attorney-General) (10.09): Mr Osborne's bill attempts to do two things. Firstly, it attempts to force better disclosure of information provided by oil companies to retailers of fuel; and, secondly, it prohibits oil companies from passing on the compliance costs incurred from the legislative requirement to temperature correct fuel.

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