Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the summer break many of our city colleagues may have enjoyed the benefit of lower fuel prices as a result of dropping international oil costs. Regrettably, in regional Australia, where I live, this was not so. Despite crude oil prices plummeting to the lowest level in decades, fuel companies and service stations failed to pass on these savings to motorists in my electorate of Capricornia. In response I wrote to the boss of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Rod Sims, asking him to include Rockhampton, Yeppoon and general Capricornia in future investigations into why prices in our area remain so high. Our coalition federal government recently provided the ACCC with new powers to probe such disparities. In a reply to my letter, the ACCC have given me an assurance that they will consider Rockhampton when it comes time for them to determine which parts of the country they will target.

In rural and remote Australia we have bigger distances to cover than our city cousins and we are disadvantaged by reduced access to public transport. I again remind the House that it is rural and regional Australia that provide the commodities for this nation to export.