Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, given that the Motor Trade Association of Western Australia says that the FuelWatch scheme in Western Australia benefits big oil companies and that Woolworths says that Western Australia is its most profitable petrol retail market, will the Prime Minister now abandon his flawed FuelWatch stunt?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me draw the honourable member’s attention to another remark made today by the chairman of Australia’s competition watchdog. It goes to the matters which the member has just raised:

Importantly, and I have to stress this point, the fuel companies have it all over us. They have a very sophisticated price-sharing system run by a company, called Informed Sources, out of Brisbane, where they know the price that every one of their competitors is charging at every service station in the metropolitan areas of Australia at any point during the day. That is as close to collusion, it’s as close to tacit coordination, as you can ever get.

That is what, seriously and soberly, the chairman of Australia’s competition watchdog has had to say. This is an important consideration, and the choice before the parliament in this matter is very clear-cut. You either vote in support of Australian consumers and motorists or you vote for a continued cosy deal between Australia’s major oil companies. That is the choice that is alive here, and the choice which the Leader of the Opposition faces very soon is whether he is going to kill this option for Australian consumers and motorists in the future through his vote in this chamber or whether he is going to allow this to proceed so that Australian motorists have the same information available to them as big oil has available to it.