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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-11-14 Daily Xml
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PETROL PRICE BOARDS

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen) (14:55): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is for the Attorney-General: can the Attorney-General advise the house by what authority—or under what authority—he claims the right to override the law of this state and deprive consumers of a protection to which they are entitled? With your leave, sir, and that of the house I will explain, and I apologise that it is not quite as brief as I would like, but it is necessary.

On 28 April 2013, the Attorney-General announced that the government was going to make it unlawful to put potentially misleading petrol price information on fuel boards at service stations, ensuring that consumers could be charged no more than the price advertised. In accordance with the Attorney's announcement, the government proposed to amend the regulations under the Fair Trading Act by making the Fair Trading Fuel Industry Code Regulations 2013, and it proceeded to do so. When these regulations were considered by the Legislative Review Committee in mid-October, it was noted that a certificate had been issued under section 10AA (known as an early commencement certificate) whereby the new regulations had already commenced operation on 1 October 2013—

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: Point of order—

The SPEAKER: Can we hear the question and then I will take the point of order.

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: Sir, this is a grievance rather than a question.

Mrs REDMOND: I am explaining the reason for the question.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Heysen has got 15 more seconds.

Mrs REDMOND: This early commencement certificate was issued according to the report to prevent unnecessary continuation of the practices prohibited by these regulations. Upon inquiring at my local service station and later confirmed by phone with the lawyer for Woolworths corporate affairs in Sydney, I was advised that they and all the other service stations had received a letter from the Attorney-General—

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: Sir, leave is withdrawn. We withdraw leave.

The SPEAKER: Leave for the explanation is withdrawn?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: Yes, my point of order is that the question was, and contained, a very large amount of argument. In fact, it was entirely argument.

The SPEAKER: It was wall-to-wall argument, yes. The Attorney-General.

Mrs Redmond: That is outrageous.

Members interjecting:

Mrs Redmond: That's display if you can read it from here.

The SPEAKER: The Deputy Premier is called to order for display, and if he is going to display could he at least share it with me!

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:57): I can explain something about this issue. There is a national consumer forum—

Mrs Redmond: There's a regulation in this state.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Will the member for Heysen be quiet.

Mr Venning: She's being provoked, Mr Speaker.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: She is being provoked by being in the room—the best way to solve that is to leave! Well, the rest of us can. Anyway—

The SPEAKER: She's being provoked by your being in office.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Indeed!

Mrs Redmond: An accurate statement, Mr Speaker.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: She is on two, isn't she Mr Speaker?

The SPEAKER: Yes, and you're on one.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Thank you. 'Who's on first, What's on second'! Anyway—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: If they keep interjecting, I'm not going to be able to get the answer out, and I thought they wanted to hear something about this.

The SPEAKER: Three minutes and seven seconds.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Thank you, okey-dokey, so here is this story. There is a thing called the national consumer ministers forum, and for some time this august body has been working through an agenda which has contained for a very long time an item about price boards. Some time ago, New South Wales formed the opinion, rightly or wrongly, that if they waited for the national body to form consensus they would all perhaps be getting elderly, and they moved on and did something by themselves. Earlier this year we resolved that we intended to do something in South Australia about this as well.

Just so that members who may not be as familiar with this as others are understand what we are talking about, there has been a practice in South Australia where some petrol outlets advertise the discounted price on their large display signs. Of course, that discounted price is not the price that appears on the bowser for the person who drives in; that discounted price is available for the person who comes in and then produces a voucher of some description, the voucher then entitling them to a discount off the price on the bowser. Putting it another way, the bowser price and the advertised price are not the same unless you are a voucher holder.

In my opinion that is misleading, and it means that people who may not be going to a regular service station might be driving down the road and see a sign advertising what appears to be a very attractive price for fuel. They think, 'Right, I'll get some fuel in there,' and they fill up. After they have filled up and have gone to pay they discover—or perhaps do not even discover—that they are being charged an extra 8¢ per litre above what was advertised. I regard that as being unsatisfactory. It is fine to advertise whatever the bowser price is, and they can say somewhere else that if you have a voucher of a certain sort you can get 8¢ a litre off. That is a different proposition to advertising a misleading discount price as if it were the bowser price.

So this government took steps to deal with this matter and, because there was a consumer ministers meeting (which I believe occurred last Friday in Brisbane) where this matter was going to be addressed yet again, it was thought that, just in case there came to be a national breakthrough on the topic, we would not impose regulation on everyone here which might then be overridden or changed again by a national consensus—which has so far eluded us all for decades.

True to form, that consensus continues to elude us. In those circumstances I am not going to sit back any longer and wait for this national consensus, which appears to have no prospect of emerging organically. We are doing something about it, and what we are doing—

The SPEAKER: The minister's time has expired, but the member for Heysen is going to assist him by asking a supplementary.

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