STANDING alongside life’s great imponderables – “What is the meaning of life?” and “Is there life after death?” – is one question humans, for all their ingenuity, have never been able to answer – “Why is petrol so damn expensive in the bush?”
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The wild disparity in price-boards across Australia is indeed one of life’s enduring mysteries.
Fuel prices raise the hackles of motorists and remain a steadfast emblem of the city-country divide.
In an industry so fiercely regulated, how can drivers in Tamworth be paying up to 20 cents more per litre than their city counterparts?
How could it be the ACCC, the body empowered to regulate fuel prices, can’t crack down on this absurd price gouging?
The regulator says it can’t prosecute unless there is proof of price fixing among retailers or oil companies.
But what constitutes proof?
Do we need to provide a secret video of servo owners or oil company executives huddled together in a back alley to prove prices are being kept artificially high?
This is a farce.
If the ACCC is fair dinkum, it has all the proof it needs in large, bold print on price boards across Tamworth.
It is the job of the taxpayer-funded ACCC to investigate glaring discrepancies and it’s high time they did it.
For most of us, buying fuel is not an optional extra – it’s a necessity.
If the price of bread or milk was 30 per cent higher in Tamworth than in the city, the ACCC would be shouting from the rooftops.
And the oft-used guff that Tamworth’s fuel prices are artificially high because of a lack of competition locally is nonsense.
Our city has major chains, both a Coles and Woolies servo and a swag of independents – including the price-leading United.
We’ve weathered enough lip service on this issue (Fuel Watch anyone?).
And we are short-changed enough living in a in a regional area.
It’s time we pour some fuel on this debate and demand the ACCC stop obfuscating and do its job.
