One of the last vestiges of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen is about to be removed on Wednesday.
Queensland was the only State that did not have a fuel tax thanks to Sir Joh and his belief that Queenslanders should not have to pay it.
When it was deemed that the tax imposed by the other States was unconstitutional the Federal Government took over taxing powers. To compensate for this Peter Costello gave the extra excise back to the States.
Now Ms Bligh is going to charge a new Tax on the people of Queensland and it’s because State Labor in QLD is broke. At the time Queensland Coalition Premier Rob Borbidge and the then Treasurer Joan Sheldon gave that money back to motorists. Labor has tried several times to get rid of this rebate and now they have succeeded.
It will be interesting to see whether the ‘Very Big- Business Council of Australia’ , representing the Retailers and the Oil Companies predominantly, go about their duties of making sure that Australians don’t complain about the exploitation that will happen to fuel prices over the coming period.
We should not confuse competition with exploitation; some people don’t want any interference in the market and use the mechanism of competition as a defence when in actual fact they are just trying to make sure that no one complains about their desire to exploit the market due to centralisation and market power.
This is why it’s so important that any test the Trade Practices Act utilises talks about market share rather than the obscure definitions currently in place. Definitions which inhibit proper prosecution and delivery back to the Australian people of fair and open competition rather than exploitation by those with a major market share.
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