Perth Prices Lifted Up to 21 Cents Overnight and WA Knew About It Yesterday
Half past two yesterday afternoon, while most of Perth was doing the Sunday shop, this morning's price rise was already sitting on a government website. Nobody in Western Australia had to guess what the bowser would say today. You could have looked it up before dinner.
Motorists over east tend not to believe that. In Sydney or Melbourne you find out what fuel costs when you pull in and read the board. In Perth you can know a day early, because WA runs the tightest fuel pricing rulebook in the country, and this morning it had plenty to publish.
The whole move happened at 6am
The state average for diesel prices lifted to 244.4 cents a litre, up from 240.3, across 955 reporting sites. A 4.1 cent move in a statewide number sounds modest enough. Inside the metro area it was nothing of the sort.
Mandurah went from 223.7 to 245.2, a 21.5 cent jump across seven servos. Ascot added 18.3. Morley lifted 16.6 to land on 245.8. Canning Vale put on 12.4, Kwinana Beach 13.1 and Baldivis 12.1.
None of them crept there over the course of the day. Perth prices move once, at 6am, then sit still for 24 hours.
The rulebook is 25 years old
FuelWatch started in January 2001, out of a period when WA drivers were convinced they were being quietly picked off by boards that changed three times a day. The fix was simple to the point of being blunt. Retailers tell the regulator tomorrow's price by 2pm. It goes up on the website at 2:30pm. From 6am the next morning that price is locked for the full day and cannot be lifted again until the following 6am.
Which means the servo that added 21 cents in Mandurah made that call yesterday afternoon, in public, knowing every competitor within a 20 minute drive could watch it happen.
Most of the country has nothing like it. Live reporting schemes now run in NSW, Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria, and they are useful, but they only tell you what a price is at that moment. A station can lift at 10am on a Tuesday and the first you know about it is the board. The Northern Territory has since adopted its own version of a locked daily price. WA got there roughly 25 years earlier.
Other countries arrived at similar rules by different routes. Austria settled the argument in 2011 by legislating that servos may raise prices once a day, at midday, and may cut them whenever they like. Germany funnels every price change into a federal transparency office within five minutes. The logic is the same in all three places. Publishing the change in advance makes it harder to move quietly.
What it means at the bowser
WA is the one state where tomorrow is not a mystery. The rule covers every fuel on the board, so unleaded petrol prices, which is what most of us are actually buying, behave the same way. If today looks ugly and tomorrow looks better, you can wait on the strength of a published number rather than a hunch.
The lock cuts the other way too. Cheap suburbs stay cheap for the full day rather than for an hour. Pinjarra is averaging 228.5 with its best site at 222.3. Naval Base sits at 228.8. Bassendean averages 232.6 but has a servo at 221.8, and Forrestfield has one at 222.9. Out at Muchea there is a site on 213.0, more than 31 cents under the state average, and it will still be on 213.0 this afternoon.
To put this in perspective, WA's 244.4 is not the outlier people assume. NSW is at 242.2, Victoria 240.2 and Tasmania 240.9. A few cents separate the states. More than 20 cents separated suburbs inside Perth this morning.
So check the board before you commit. A 20 cent spread across one metro area is about 12 dollars on a 60 litre fill, and in WA you are checking a number that will hold all day. Learn your local rhythm too, because when the price is locked from dawn to dawn, knowing which day to fill up is worth more than knowing which servo.
Fuel pricing rules tend to get written about only when they fail. Perth's have been sitting there since 2001, doing something fairly dull and doing it well, which is probably why nobody over east has heard of them.
