The Victorian Government has introduced into Parliament a Bill enabling the implementation of Phase 2 of the Fair Fuel Plan.
Under Phase 2, fuel retailers will be required to report, a day in advance, what their maximum fuel price will be. Retailers will be required to report the maximum price before 2pm with that price being reported publicly at 4 pm that day.
The Bill will make sure that the maximum price gets locked in for 24 hours and it will be an offence to sell fuel above that price.
Retailers will only be permitted to lower their fuel prices throughout the day. This means that once a day’s maximum fuel price comes into force at 6 am, the price of fuel cannot go up for 24 hours. While the price cannot go up, there will be no limitations on a retailer’s ability to lower their prices throughout the day.
In addition, it will be an offence to fail to report price changes within 30 minutes, and it will also be an offence for fuel retailers to fail to report if a type of fuel they sell has become temporarily unavailable.
Regarding Phase 1 of the Fair Fuel Plan, ACAPMA fully supports fuel price transparency in Victoria just like we have in every other state but does not support the Victorian Government’s decision to hold onto pricing data for 24 hours before releasing it (upon request) to third party apps.
ACAPMA can’t see how the government can argue that it can increase competition by monopolising pricing data.
Every other state makes pricing information as publicly available as possible, to both drive competition and empower consumers in their fuel purchasing decisions.
ACAPMA
