Monday’s rally was the beginning of a movement to say ‘No More’ to being ripped off by local service stations.
In Yarrawonga on Monday, to fill your tank with diesel cost just a smidge under $3 a litre.
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At $297.9, the price was 20c a litre more expensive than the Metro Service Station in Rutherglen and 21c a litre more than BP at Cobram.
But that’s not news to Yarrawonga residents who are fed up and furious after being ripped off at the fuel bowser for years.
More than 50 people rallied at the Yarrawonga foreshore on Monday afternoon to meet with Ovens Valley MP Tim McCurdy and talk about what could be done.
Although many have tried, no-one has been able to find out exactly why and how local service stations are able to get away with it.
“I wrote to the ACCC in July 2020 and said, ‘this is what's going on, there's collusion going on,” Mr McCurdy told the crowd.
“Collusion is illegal, and just for the record, I invited the ACCC to this meeting; we heard nothing, we got no reply.”
Australian competition law does not prevent a business from setting higher prices, provided it does so independently.
In 2020, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) was unable to prove collusion between fuel stations in Yarrawonga, a finding Mr McCurdy described as “weak as wash up water”.
Ovens Valley MP Tim McCurdy began investigating high fuel prices in Yarrawonga in 2020, but the ACCC found it could not prove collusion.
Mr McCurdy, who lives in Cobram and has his office in Wangaratta but says he won’t fill up in Yarrawonga if he can help it.
“The price is much lower in Cobram, Benalla, Rutherglen and Wangaratta,” he said.
Of the more than 50 people at Monday’s rally, the majority indicated they did not fill up in Yarrawonga.
“The problem is that when you leave town to get cheaper fuel, then you go and do your groceries, you buy shoes and schoolbooks for the kids…
“It’s not just a fuel issue; it's all the other businesses that are missing out as well.
“Every time I talk about fuel in Parliament … fuel price goes down for about three days, and then it comes back up again.”
Ideas floated at Monday’s rally included investigating the possibility of an independent, community-owned fuel station and boycotting individual service stations to put pressure on their bottom line.
A working group is being formed from those who attended the rally and a Facebook page is being created.
“We need to keep the pressure on ... let's try to put the wind up those businesses who are just taking advantage of us all the time,” Mr McCurdy said.
“This is years it's been going on, and it will not change until we do something about it.”
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