The co-ordinator of a scheme that has helped Perth drivers save up to $520 a year on petrol said he would be willing to talk to the ACT government about how similar measures could be implemented in Canberra.
Calls for the territory government to address Canberra’s consistently high petrol prices are growing, with fed-up drivers calling for action and the National Roads and Motorists’ Association advocating for a real-time price monitoring scheme similar to the one operating in NSW.
But the ACT government is resisting calls to introduce such measures, instead encouraging drivers to use free, independent websites that track prices and saying it is unable to control many of the factors that influence petrol prices.
Kyle Huynh, who co-ordinates the Western Australian government’s FuelWatch scheme, pointed to the findings of a recent Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report as proof that a government-regulated scheme could deliver savings for drivers.
The report found Perth motorists could save up to $520 a year – more than twice as much as drivers in other Australian capital cities – if they filled up once a week on Mondays, the low point of the city’s price cycle, rather than at the high point on Tuesdays.
The report said the predictability of Perth’s price cycle was likely influenced by FuelWatch, which requires fuel retailers to notify their petrol prices for the next day by 2pm each afternoon.
The prices are made public on the FuelWatch website at 2.30pm and come into effect at 6am the next day. The scheme’s 24-hour rule –the only one of its kind in Australia – means the prices cannot change again until 6am the day after.
“We know there’s benefit to a government-regulated monitoring scheme, but I can’t say yes, [the ACT government] should introduce it,” Mr Huynh said.
“Certainly, we would discuss it with them.
“We’ve been around for a very long time and we’ve spoken to many authorities around the world who have developed their own [systems informed by FuelWatch], but they’re all slightly different.
“It’s really up to [the ACT government], but we know there are benefits there.”
It is unclear how much it might cost to run a FuelWatch-style scheme in a jurisdiction as small as the ACT, but the most recent attempts to establish such a scheme came in 2008. The Rudd government planned to roll out FuelWatch nationwide at a cost of $20.9 million over four years, but the legislation did not pass the Senate.
Petrol price cycles only exist in Australia’s five largest cities, with prices in the smaller capitals of Canberra, Hobart and Darwin influenced by factors more common in regional areas. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report, these include lack of competition, lower volumes of fuel being sold and lower convenience site sales than in the major cities.
Mr Huynh said the Western Australian scheme gave the people the power to drive prices down if they rewarded competitive service stations and shunned the more expensive sites.
“If they want to drive prices down, everybody should jump on the bandwagon and shop at the cheapest [petrol stations],” he said.
“The more expensive ones will then drop their prices. It’s basic economics.
“The main benefits of FuelWatch are price certainty, price transparency and the early warnings we can provide before prices jump, because we know every afternoon what the prices are for the next day.”
The National Roads and Motorists’ Association is lobbying the ACT government to introduce real-time price monitoring similar to the Fuel Check system that has operated in NSW since 2016. Queensland is also trialling real-time price monitoring.
But Mr Huynh said FuelWatch’s 24-hour rule gave it the upper hand when it came to providing certainty and transparency for drivers.
“The price that you see on FuelWatch is what you pay [in Perth],” he said.
“In NSW, you could see the price [on Fuel Check] and start driving to the petrol station, but 10 minutes later it could change, so that certainty isn’t there.
“And if you look at those free price monitoring schemes that are out there, like MotorMouth, they’re not regulated and they don’t have the prices for everything in the market.”
Extracted from The Canberra Times