Fuel Price Monitoring

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:33): My question is for the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney-General update the house on actions being taken to investigate a real-time fuel price monitoring system in South Australia?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (14:33): I thank the member for Colton for this question. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the member when he was the candidate for Colton. One of the joys of working with him was when we were doorknocking and people were raising cost-of-living issues with us. They went from unaffordable electricity, obviously, across to the concern about high council rates. They immediately recognised him as being famous and ignored me, of course. Nevertheless, they were happy to talk to him about sports vouchers and all the important things, whatever the age group in his electorate, that were concerning them. It had a very clear common thread: they were worried about the cost of living, they were worried about future jobs for the children and they loved him.

All the work that was done filtered into part of the presentation for the opposition and the Premier's very strong commitment to ensuring that we relieve those who are under financial pressure in their households. One of these was to look at real-time fuel pricing. I don't know how many members of the parliament have recently gone out and purchased fuel. Many people on this side of the house have country electorates and do tens of thousands of kilometres a year. I would be lucky within Bragg to do tens of thousands of kilometres within a decade.

Nevertheless, I too have responsibility to move in regional areas. Recently, when I was in regional South Australia, it was $1.71 a litre, and that is quite expensive. I noticed just recently in metropolitan Adelaide it was displayed at $1.51. Again, that seems quite expensive, but whatever the price it is a significant part of the household budget. It's something which, for whatever reason, whether you buy a bus ticket that uses fuel to drive itself or whether you drive your own vehicle, is a very important part of the household budget. So this commitment was made.

Prior to the election, the fuel price transparency was flagged as a measure to try to put some power back into consumers' hands in respect of where they buy their petrol. As I recently said on country radio, we need to have a situation where, unlike some towns where there might be only one petrol station in regional parts of the state, when people get up in the morning and they need the use of their vehicle—whether that's a tractor, a truck, a motor vehicle or a pushbike with a motorised extra aspect to it—they need to have the chance to identify where they can purchase fuel at the best possible price and minimise the cost to their household budget.

So we committed to investigate how we might best provide this. When looking at it, we of course identified that in New South Wales, Western Australia and Northern Territory, where they have mandated real-time fuel pricing through the use of apps, reports to me have suggested that in some of those jurisdictions there is an indication that prices have actually gone up. I note a recent inquiry conducted by the Victorian parliament into fuel prices in regional Victoria, which resolved not to support mandatory fuel pricing reporting schemes, finding that there was little or no evidence that mandatory fuel pricing would do.

Under these schemes, the situation needs to be clearly looked at. We are doing that. I thank the Commissioner for Consumer and Business Services, who is working with the Motor Trade Association and the RAA, and indeed some smaller operators and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. That investigation is still progressing. I will report to the parliament again when we have a further update.