South Australian motorists are wondering why their NSW cousins have a workable Fuel Check and they do not

One of North Coast Voices South Australian readers alerted us to this.

CHRISTMAS 2015…..

ABC News, 24 December 2015:

Motorists will soon have access to the same petrol price information as retailers, under a deal brokered by the competition watchdog.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has reached agreement with petrol price information service Informed Sources and four major petrol retailers to make almost real-time data available to motorists.

Currently, the retailers have exclusive access to information about petrol price moves within 15-30 minutes of when they occur through Informed Sources.

Under the deal, Informed Sources will make the same information available to consumers for free and to third parties on commercial terms.

The ACCC's chairman Rod Sims told ABC News that this will facilitate improved competition amongst petrol retailers.

"Consumers will have the information to shop and get the best deal, that will improve competition on the ground," he argued.

"Secondly, ourselves and motoring organisations and others will be able to see exactly what's going on, who's leading prices up, who's leading prices down."

See: Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), Petrol price information sharing proceedings resolved

IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA JUST ON 9 MONTHS LATER……

RAA, media release, 17 September 2016:

Site specific fuel prices will no longer be available via RAA’s website due to a deal struck by the ACCC, and it could cost motorists up to $24 a tank when filling up. 

RAA Senior Manager Mobility & Automotive Policy Mark Borlace said the agreement comes into effect from today. 

“At the moment we receive site specific fuel prices for Adelaide twice a day, and we share that information with motorists via our website,” said Mr Borlace. 

“We also use the data to monitor price trends day-to-day, which allows us to notify motorists when a price spike is imminent, just as we did this week when prices spiked +27cpl. 

“As of today, we are only able to provide a daily average price for fuel in Adelaide, which is significantly inferior to what motorists have benefited from via our website for more than a decade.” 

Using RAA’s website, on occasion Adelaide petrol motorists could spot as much as a 40cpl variation in prices between the best and worst sites. 

“Using this information, Adelaide motorists would have saved anywhere between $12 and $24 per 60L tank over the past year,” said Mr Borlace. 

“If motorists are left to rely on street price boards, they won’t be able to see the ‘bigger picture’ to decide which route to take on any given day to get the best deal on fuel.” 

RAA is disappointed that motorists will not be able to get reliable site-specific fuel price information online as a consequence of the ACCC’s deal with the fuel industry, and has called on the State Government to take action. 

“Earlier this year, New South Wales introduced legislation that compels every fuel retailer to report their fuel prices in real-time to a government agency who provides this to the public free of charge without any restrictions,” said Mr Borlace. 

“Not only would an initiative like this allow motorists to find the cheapest prices, it also means we could continue to scrutinise the fuel industry and enhance competition amongst retailers who have to compete with a good price to attract customers.” 

RAA will continue to investigate all avenues to cater for motorists’ needs when it comes to purchasing fuel. 

“Limited pricing information is available via a number of smartphone apps but these offerings do not reliably tell motorists where to find the cheapest fuel,” said Mr Borlace. 

“We’re also concerned that by only providing fuel prices in one format, it disadvantages over half of our members who don’t use smartphone apps. These people are generally the most sensitive to fuel price movements and would benefit most from knowing where to find the cheapest prices. 

“In reality, most motorists will be left in the dark when it comes to fuel prices due to the ACCC’s agreement with the fuel industry.” 

SA Fuel price information is available at raa.com.au/fuel

South Australia’s Deputy Premier John Rau has allegedly told the RAA that it would be too expensive to change the law to make releasing the petrol price information legal.

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Results by NSW Local Government Area here.

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Australia faces an era of mass extinctions

For decades international scientists have been warning Australia that this island continent would feel the worst environmental impacts of global warming first.

And for just as many decades (with the exception of the years between 2007 and 2013), as both governments and the governed, this country has been ignoring these warnings.

The end result is that Australia now lists 83 species of higher plants, 23 mammal species, 22 species of birds and at least 4 frogs species as having been driven into extinction since 1788. 

There are many hundreds more threatened species and ecological communities. See: C'wealth EPBC Act List of Threatened Fauna.

While we as a nation and people have not yet achieved 100 per cent extinction in certain flora and fauna groups, climate change has arrived to assist in turning this unique landmass and its coastal waters into a barren wasteland. 

This year alone has seen 93 per cent of The Great Barrier Reef experience coral bleaching and 700 kilometres of the Gulf of Carpentaria suffer widespread mangrove dieback with saltmash loss, while the Great Southern Reef lost 100 kms of its giant kelp forests in 2011 leading to the functional extinction of 370sq km of rocky cool-climate reefs, extending down the coast from Kalbarri, about 570km north of Perth, Western Australia. 

Now reputable institutions and senior scientists are giving us another urgent warning about extinctions to come if Australia doesn't stop acting as if the natural environment hasn't changed for the worse in the last 200 years.

SCIENTISTS’DECLARATION: ACCELERATING FOREST, WOODLAND AND GRASSLAND DESTRUCTION IN AUSTRALIA

Australia’s land clearing rate is once again among the highest in the world.

Remaining forests and woodlands are critical for much of our wildlife, for the health and productivity of our lands and waters, and for the character of our nation. Beginning in the 1990s, governments gradually increased protection of these remaining forests and woodlands.

However, those laws are now being wound back.

The State of Queensland has suffered the greatest loss of forests and woodlands. But while stronger laws by the mid-2000s achieved dramatic reductions of forest and woodland loss, recent weakening of laws reversed the trend. Loss of rtinture forest has more than trebled since 2009. In Victoria, home to four of Australia’s five most heavily cleared bioregions, land clearing controls were weakened in 2013, and in New South Wales, proposed biodiversity laws provide increased opportunities for habitat destruction.

Of the eleven world regions highlighted as global deforestation fronts, eastern Australia is the only one in a developed country. This problem threatens much of Australia’s extraordinary biodiversity and, if not redressed, will blight the environmental legacy we leave future generations.

Australia’s wildlife at risk

Already, Australia’s environment has suffered substantial damage from clearing of forests, woodlands and grasslands, including serious declines in woodland birds and reptiles.  Vast numbers of animals are killed by forest and woodland destruction. For example, between 1998 and 2005 an estimated 100 million native birds, reptiles and mammals were killed because of destruction of their habitat in NSW; in Queensland, the estimate was 100 million native animals dying each year between 1997 and 1999. As land clearing once again escalates, so too will these losses of wildlife.

The loss of habitat is among the greatest of threats to Australia’s unique threatened species, imperiling 60% of Australia’s more than 1,700 threatened species. Habitat protection is essential for preventing more species from becoming threatened in the future, adding to our burgeoning threatened species lists. Habitat removal eliminates the plants and animals that lived in it; increases risks to wildlife from introduced predators; impacts surface and groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and fragments habitat so that individuals are unable to move through the landscape. It also reduces the ability of species to move in response to climate change.

The societal costs of forest and woodland destruction

Forest and woodland destruction also causes long-term costs to farmers, governments and society. Removal of native vegetation:

·         Hastens erosion and reduces fertility of Australia’s ancient and fragile soils 

·         Increases the risk of soils becoming saline 

·         Exacerbates drought 

·         Reduces numbers of native pollinators and many wildlife species (such as woodland birds and insectivorous bats) that control agricultural pests 

·         Reduces shade for livestock from heat and wind.

Continued and increasing removal of forests, woodlands and grasslands increases the cost of restoring landscapes and reduces the chance of success. For example, the Australian Government has committed to plant 20 million trees by 2020. Yet many more than 20 million trees are cleared every year in Queensland alone.

Forest and woodland destruction increases the threat to some of Australia’s most iconic environmental assets. Coral health on The Great Barrier Reef has declined precipitously from the effects of high temperatures associated with climate change, poor water quality, and the flow-on impacts it triggers (such as crown-of-thorns outbreaks). Native vegetation removal from catchments that flow into the Great Barrier Reef liberates topsoil and contaminants, reducing water quality and threatening the health and resilience of the Great Barrier Reef. Governments have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this problem, with estimates of the full cost of restoring water quality as high as AUD$10 billion.

Native vegetation is a major carbon sink. Forest and woodland destruction is the fastest-growing contributor to Australia’s carbon emissions, as it transfers the carbon that was stored in the vegetation to the atmosphere. Hence, Australia’s increasing forest and woodland destruction threatens its ability to meet its commitments under four major international treaties: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Heritage Convention, the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Urgently-needed solutions

·         Develop and implement a strategy to end net loss of native vegetation, and restore over-cleared landscapes

·         Recognise all biodiversity, not just threatened species, in policy and legislation for the management of native vegetation

·         Establish clear, transparent and repeatable national reporting of clearing of native vegetation

·         Use rigorous biodiversity assessment methods for assessing clearing requests, accounting for all potential impacts, including cumulative and indirect impacts

·         Identify habitats that are of high conservation value for complete protection

·         For unavoidable losses of native vegetation, require robust and transparent offsets that meet the highest standards and improve biodiversity outcomes

Thirteen years ago, scientists from across the world expressed their grave concern about ongoing high rates of land forest and woodland destruction in the Australian State of Queensland. For a while, the warning was heeded, and the Queensland state government acted to bring land clearing to historically low levels.

The progress made then is now being undone. Forest and woodland destruction has resumed at increasingly high rates. This return of large-scale deforestation to Australia risks further irreversible environmental consequences of international significance.

Today, scientists from across the world (including those listed), in conjunction with scientific societies and the delegates of the Society for Conservation Biology (Oceania) Conference, call upon Australian governments and parliaments, especially those of Queensland and New South Wales, to take action. We call for the prevention of a return to the damaging past of high rates of woodland and forest destruction, in order to protect the unique biodiversity and marine environments of which Australia is sole custodian.

Signatories

Scientific Societies

·         The Society for Conservation Biology Oceania

·         The Ecological Society of Australia

·         The Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales

·         The Australian Wildlife Management Society

And 200 senior scientists from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Malaysia, Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom, and United States of America whose names can be found here.

8 July 2016