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"FuelWatch has become a free advertisement for supermarket chains,
operating in league with the fuel companies," said WA Motor Trade
Association chief executive Peter Fitzpatrick.
The
Senate committee inquiring into the National Fuelwatch Bill today heard
WA Government and industry submissions in Perth, where the scheme was
introduced in 2001 and now covers 80 per cent of the state.
Under
the scheme, most WA fuel retailers are required to notify, by 2pm,
their next day's retail price for each fuel they sell. Retailers must
retain the notified price for 24 hours from 6am the next day. Mr
Fitzpatrick told the committee FuelWatch was "nothing more than a good
research tool" that had no capacity to lower retail petrol prices.
It
could provide transparency in pricing at the retail level, enabling
people to find the cheapest prices and to access the cheaper petrol if
they were "willing to travel a couple of suburbs", Mr Fitzpatrick said. But
oil companies and supermarkets had combined to ensure they dominated
the listings of prices posted on the internet and distributed by media.
On
this weeks FuelWatch website, 39 of the 60 listings were
supermarket-linked petrol stations and not one was a truly independent
operator, Mr Fitzpatrick said. Nationally, supermarket
operations offering discount petrol had 50 per cent of market share
while operating from only 15 per cent of retail fuel sites. "Even
Mr Samuel (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief Graeme
Samuel) says we are operating in a comfortable oligopoly where there is
little or no competition," Mr Fitzpatrick said.
Mr Fitzpatrick
said that only a prices commission operating at the wholesale level - a
system he said had upset the oil companies when it was introduced in WA
in 2000 - could effectively bring down prices at the bowser."We tend to
forget that sitting behind FuelWatch is a whole raft of powers that
have not been exercised," he said. He
contradicted claims by the WA government that the number of independent
operators had marginally increased under FuelWatch, saying the
government was including independent "chains" in its figures.
Among
these were retailers such as United and Gull, which were independent
oil companies and not independent business operations.
Franchisees
of the large operators such as BP and Caltex were the true
independents, Mr Fitzpatrick said, "and they are just about gone.
In other states there's better opportunity as an independent," he said.
The
WA government's Department of Consumer Protection said the FuelWatch
scheme enabled consumers to choose a petrol retailer offering prices
around 14 cents cheaper than the dearer outlets, translating to a $7
saving in filling the average car tank.
"FuelWatch is all about transparency," said Consumer Protection Commissioner Anne Driscoll.
The
number of people accessing the website had increased significantly in
the past six months, and about 300,000 West Australians were now
regular visitors to the site, she said.
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