Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .
Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3281 ..
MR WOOD: I did not hear the Minister's interjection, but I take it from his interjection that he will have a careful look and pass it rapidly to the Health Minister so that the concerns expressed by the committee can be attended to. It may be that there is an answer that has escaped the committee. This is one of the more serious reports that the committee has brought to the Assembly.
Report
MR WOOD (11.37): Mr Speaker, I present the report of the Select Committee on Petrol Pricing, together with a copy of the minutes of proceedings, and I move:
That the report be noted.
Mr Speaker, this report is presented at a time when the price of petrol in the ACT is the lowest it has been for many years. This is because the move to increase competition which the former Government began is now having its effect as more independents come into the market. The price of petrol has long been a contentious issue. The former Prices Justification Tribunal maintained control over petrol pricing at a national level from 1973 - a role assumed by the Prices Surveillance Authority in 1993 and further assumed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission when it subsumed the PSA in 1995. During those years there were innumerable inquiries into petrol prices. This report I have brought down today is not the first in the ACT.
Elsewhere governments have been active in seeking to unravel the complexities of the petrol market. Again, at the national level there were inquiries by the former Industries Assistance Commission, by its successor, the Industry Commission, and by the Bureau of Transport Economics. There was an inquiry into retail prices in rural New South Wales by the New South Wales Government in 1995, an examination by the ACT Government Working Group on Petrol Prices in 1993 and a review of petrol supply arrangements by this Assembly's Standing Committee on Public Accounts in 1994. This all adds up to a great number and constant stream of inquiries by government agencies into petrol markets and prices at the Federal, State and Territory levels over the last 20 to 30 years or so. It has to be said that this constant activity demonstrates that there has been little apparent progress in establishing public confidence in the basis for petrol pricing and supply arrangements. It raises the question of what a further inquiry by this Assembly could have hoped to achieve.
Against the odds, the committee has achieved a great deal. The report brings together the streams of opinion within the ACT market in such a way that the average Canberran, as much as anyone in the industry, can comprehend the forces and factors which influence prices. I venture that this has not been a feature of most studies and inquiries undertaken in the past. I want to give particular credit to the person who did most of the work on the inquiry, David Skinner, who came briefly to the Assembly as part of the graduate administrative assistants scheme and who performed outstanding work in this role.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .