Calls for federal investigating into fuel price discrepancies across Queensland

WHILE some motorists are enjoying petrol prices below a dollar a litre, spare a thought for the Aussies paying more than $1.40.

Perth Now Pictured is the new Puma Super 7 Service Station , Guildford Road Bayswater . Pictured is the action during the fre...

FALLING fuel prices have brought relief to motorists across Australia, but spare a thought for those in far north Queensland.

Those motorists are still putting up with high costs at the bowser — currently more than $1.20 a litre — while their counterparts in Brisbane enjoy the lowest fuel prices in a decade.

But there a now calls for this and other huge fuel price discrepancies across the sunshine state to be investigated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Yesterday, during a petrol prices round table in Brisbane, the price for unleaded fuel in Cairns was 121.6 cents a litre, while on the Gold Coast it was 95 cents, according to data from Compare the Market.

Motorists in Brisbane paid 96.7 cents and in Ipswich 97.5 cents, while in Goondiwindi near the NSW border, and Emerald in the central highlands, unleaded was priced at 121.5 cents and 128.3 cents respectively.

The priciest unleaded fuel in Queensland yesterday was in the outback town of Cunnamulla, where motorists were slugged 141.4 cents a litre at the pump.

At yesterday’s roundtable meeting Queensland Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey called on the federal government to provide resources to the ACCC to set up an inquiry into fuel prices across the state.

Prices in Brisbane on January 13.

Prices in Cairns on January 19.

He argued similar probes in NSW, Tasmania and the Northern Territory had previously driven down fuel prices.

“It does make my blood boil that the ACCC isn’t being resourced to do their job in Queensland,” Mr Bailey said.

“It’s time for the federal government to step up and resource them to do their job and to get the scrutiny and the pressure in the Queensland fuel market.”

ACCC representatives at the meeting indicated they wanted to act, according to AAP.

Somewhat ironically, the roundtable meeting took place at a time when fuel prices in Queensland are lower than they’ve been in a decade — less than $1 a litre in some areas.

But Paul Turner, the spokesman for motoring lobby group RACQ, said the timing wasn’t a coincidence.

“The very low fuel prices in Brisbane and Queensland at the moment I don’t think are an accident,” Mr Turner said.

“We believe that the public focus on fuel prices is (being) taken notice of and that, perhaps over the last week or so, we’ve seen the fuel price cycle held down lower.”

Mr Turner said the ACCC needed to specifically look at Cairns in the state’s far north, where fuel prices were consistently higher than the rest of the country.

He told the ABC Queensland motorists generally paid two to three cents a litre more, on average, than counterparts in Sydney and Melbourne.

Last month it was six to eight cents a litre more.

“The fact of the matter is, there’s no good reason for the differences that motorists are paying across the state,” Mr Turner said.

The roundtable also looked at ways to increase competition among fuel companies, including by making consumers more informed with real time data and improving price boards outside of petrol stations.