- Labor will establish 12 publicly-owned fuel stations if re-elected in October, with the sites to be determined by where competition is most needed across the state.
- In his state of the state address on Tuesday, Mr Miles will also announce Labor’s plan to ban petrol stations from raising the price of fuel more than once a day and a trial to cap price increases to 5 cents a litre a day.
- Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association chief executive Mark McKenzie told ABC Radio Brisbane it was unclear if Labor had the ability to implement the plan.
I think this is actually a really interesting policy. We’ve long known that the petrol price cycle is a complete farce with no relation to reality: it’s just a manipulative profit-seeking trick by petrol companies. But the ACCC is powerless to do anything about it, because it’s not actually illegal in any way. If you watch the cycle, it’s defined by a long slow decrease in prices followed by jumping way up to the top in just a few days. If they literally can’t jump up all at once like this, it may have a dampening effect on the cycle itself, resulting in more consistent and realistic prices.
… or just ridiculously high prices all around