Page 2070 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 June 1993
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Clause agreed to.
Clauses 19 to 21, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
Clause 22
Amendment (by Mr Berry) agreed to:
Page 8, paragraph (d), line 4, omit the paragraph, substitute the following paragraph:
"(d) by omitting subsection (8).".
Clause, as amended, agreed to.
Remainder of Bill, by leave, taken as a whole, and agreed to.
Bill, as amended, agreed to.
PETROL PRICES
Paper
[COGNATE BILL AND PAPER:
FAIR TRADING (FUEL PRICES) BILL 1992
PETROL PRICES - WORKING GROUP REPORT]
Debate resumed from 26 November 1992, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MADAM SPEAKER: Is it the wish of the Assembly to debate this order of the day concurrently with the Fair Trading (Fuel Prices) Bill 1992 and the Petrol Prices - Working Group Report - Government's Position - Ministerial Statement? There being no objection, that course will be followed. I remind members that, in debating order of the day No. 4, they may also address their remarks to orders of the day No. 5 and No. 6.
MR HUMPHRIES (5.24): The Assembly is presently considering, in effect, three documents - the legislation which the Minister tabled back in the middle of last year, the report of the subsequently established working party on petrol pricing in the ACT and the response to that report which was handed down yesterday. The report of November 1992 was a fairly significant document, Madam Speaker. It presents, I think it is fair to say, some solutions to the problems which face the ACT in bringing down the price of petrol at bowsers in this town. Some of the suggestions made in that report, I believe, are sensible and sound; some could be broadly supported.
The Government's support for measures that are sensible is to be welcomed and is commendable, but the problems are more complex than the Government has given them credit for being. The central problem is the lack of competition in the ACT retail petrol market. The report itself identified several factors which contributed to that low level of competition, among them the fact that there was a lack of independent competitors or chains in the ACT. The number of independents has dropped in recent years.
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