Local motorists can expect to feel more pain thanks to ongoing manipulation of petrol shopper docket schemes.
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| Federal Member for Wright, Scott Buchholz, says that motorist will feel more price pain at the bowser due to petrol price "manipulation" |
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Local federal MP Scott Buchholz said the Coalition has written to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to investigate fuel discount dockets following allegations the dockets have been used to hide an unjustified increase in the cost of petrol.
Mr Buchholz said new research by the Australian Automobile Association (AAA) showed that the big supermarkets were hiking their prices to cover the 8 cent a litre fuel offers.
“Given the ‘mysteries’ of petrol pricing for consumers and the resources and profile of a dedicated Petrol Commissioner, you would have thought the ACCC would have engaged in a proactive and unprompted examination of the impacts of ‘double discounting’,” Mr Buchholz said.
“The concern here is that shopper dockets could be manipulated to the long term disadvantage of motorists, by raising average gross retail margins.
Yesterday Commsec announced that petrol prices were set to jump by another 3 cents within a fortnight.
Mr Buchholz said the office of the petrol commissioner was a useless gimmick and should be scrapped.
“The petrol commissioner is nothing more than window-dressing installed by the Rudd-Gillard Governments to give the illusion it was doing something about petrol prices after the failure of the $20 million FuelWatch scheme."
“Just because you spend around $2 million a year having a Petrol Commissioner doesn’t mean you’re going to get results and the research conducted by the motoring associations proves it isn’t working."
“The latest shopper docket issue is further evidence of the need for a full root and branch review of competition policy and why the petrol commissioner role should be given the boot”.