Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Rod Sims said Australian’s are being ripped off in three forms when it comes to petrol prices.
Mr Sims spoke to Neil Mitchell at 3AW this morning.
“The main one is that 50 percent of the cost of petrol is the overseas cost of crude oil, and getting it here,” Mr Sims said.
“Unfortunately, we’ve got an overseas cartel from the oil producing nations. You know, the Middle East, Russia, countries in Africa. And they get together and control how much fuel gets sold on the world stage, and that pushes the price up enormously.”
“We would love to be able to do something about that, but it’s all run by governments.
“Thirty-five per cent of what you pay is tax. And you’ve got to say, why are we paying basically a fuel excise of 41 cents on top of the GST?
“The complication there is it’s actually there to fund the roads that governments build, but the link is so poor, you have no idea whether this level of taxation is the right one to fund the roads or not.
“The answer on tax is let’s work out how much we’re spending on roads, how much we want to spend on roads, and raise the money to do that so that motorists know firstly, the tax they’re paying is going to fund the roads, and secondly, they’re not paying a cent more than they should.
“In our view, margins are two to three cents a litre too high. That’s $400-600 million. That’s a lot of money for Australian motorists.
“It’s not against the law for someone to overcharge for a good,” Mr Sims said.
Rod Sims wants to make ACCC look like it is doing something about fuel prices – so he suggests putting the screws on the retail end of the market for a 2% reduction in price as consolation to the motorist that he cant do anything about “Governments” including his own.
This Government could easily save 2% if they took a half serious look at the wastage taking place in actually building the roads – idle machinery, armies of “lollipop men”, unnecessarily lengthy diversions and low speed limits etc etc.
He sprukes extra competition in the market yet at the same time suggests making it less attractive for new players ?