ONCE again Territory motorists are petrol bowser victims.
What happened almost overnight to send petrol prices soaring from around 121.9 cents a litre for discounted unleaded to a staggering $139.9 cents a litre? It just does not make sense.
The Territory Labor Government says it is deeply concerned that the price of unleaded petrol has risen at all but two petrol stations in the greater Darwin region over the past few days.
The NT News shares that same concern and we are sure Territory motorists do likewise.
Normally the easy out is to put the blame on an increase in world oil prices. But even then any increase should not take place until existing stocks bought at the old price are exhausted. So it is farfetched to believe that every service station exhausted their old supplies at the same time.
It certainly makes you feel even sicker when you see petrol in Adelaide for about 120 cents a litre, Perth 118 cents, and Melbourne 129 cents. Sydney and Brisbane are around 136 cents.
We welcome that the Department of Treasury has spoken directly to the ACCC to alert them to the matter. What action the ACCC takes remains to be seen.
Interestingly tomorrow the Government’s mandatory retail fuel price reporting scheme, MyFuelNT comes into effect. A MyFuel NT website will provide real-time fuel prices for every fuel retailer in the Territory so motorists can search for the cheapest fuel.
The Gunner Government says the initiative aims to empower consumers through increased transparency of fuel information and encourage greater competition in the Territory fuel market. It is hard to see how the taxpayers’ investment of around $250,000 in this initiative is going to force down the price of fuel when they are all slugging consumers the same price.
Extracted from: NT News
