Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on an issue about achieving prosperity through competition, about ensuring that we have competitive enterprise in Australia. Last week I presented the Main Committee a petition of 6,409 signatures from chief petitioner Bill Brown and the residents of Colac and district. The Colac and district community want to draw to the attention of the House that the price of petrol in Colac appears to be set by the two major food retailers and there is no effective competition between them.

I commend Bill Brown and his team for their efforts in gathering support for this petition and I call on the government to ensure that the ACCC investigates this matter. If Australia, and especially its regional and rural communities, is to prosper, we have to make sure that there is proper competition in all sectors of the Australian economy. In the petition the Colac and district residents ask the House to take ‘positive action to provide the residents of Colac and district with ‘a fair pricing structure to ensure that the fuel they are getting is not overpriced. They would like the ACCC to investigate to see if there is unfair competition, if there is duopoly practice, and, if there is, to make some decisions which will prevent this occurring in the future.

This petition of 6,409 signatures is no small thing, and I hope that this government will give it the attention and consideration it deserves. Colac and district has 13,000 to 15,000 people, so the fact that they got 6,409 signatures means that the residents are very worried about what is taking place. If they do not think that there is fair competition then we are beholden to investigate whether or not their concerns are real. The residents of this community are already struggling with electricity hikes, interest rate hikes and the increased cost of living under this Labor government. Sadly, they are likely to get hit again with the introduction of a carbon tax—let us call it what it is, a carbon tax. They cannot afford to have the two major food retailers in an uncompetitive environment, if that is what is operating, putting up the cost of their petrol.

This issue is broader than one just of petrol. If we are seeing an increase in anticompetitive behaviour in the marketplace we need to act. One of the issues we have in the dairy sector at the moment is that one of the big supermarkets is using milk as a loss leader. If the supermarket wears milk as a loss leader and wears that to its profit, that is fine. But if it does not and it is looking to vertically integrate so that it can control the whole food chain when it comes to milk and introducing dairy products then, potentially, we have an issue. If there is not fair competition within the marketplace, ultimately consumers will be the losers and we have to ensure that this does not happen.

This is particularly important for our communities in regional and rural Australia. There is not the population to ensure that we get competition occurring naturally, so we have to ensure that when big players get involved they do not use the power of the market to intervene in a way which discriminates against the consumer. As the residents of Colac and district are telling the government through this petition, they are not happy if there is anticompetitive behaviour taking place and they want it fixed. I hope the government will get the ACCC to intervene in this matter. I hope it will look at it because competition is vital to the Australian economy and to our future. The government needs to intervene to make sure that we have proper competition in Colac. (Time expired)