Commonwealth Numbered Regulations - Explanatory Statements

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FUEL SALES GRANTS AMENDMENT REGULATIONS 2001 (NO. 2) 2001 NO. 189

STATUTORY RULES 2001 No. 189

Issued by authority of the Assistant Treasurer

Fuel Sales Grants Act 2000

Fuel Sales Grants Amendment Regulations 2001 (No. 2)

Section 9 of the Fuel Sales Grants Act 2000 (the Act) provides that the Governor-General may make regulations prescribing matters required to give effect to the Act.

The Act came into effect on 1 July 2000. The legislation was introduced for the purpose of maintaining fuel price relativities between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas following the introduction of the goods and services tax and the contemporaneous reduction in the excise rate on fuel.

The principal regulations specify that a grant rate of 1 cent per litre is payable for sales of petrol and diesel to consumers in non-metropolitan areas and that a grant rate of 2 cents per litre is payable for sales of petrol and diesel in remote areas. A further 1 cent per litre is available in remote areas where the price of petrol and diesel has exceeded $1.21 continuously for 4 weeks or more.

The purpose of the amending Regulations was to address the situation where the location of the boundary between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas resulted in a service station in a metropolitan area having competitors on either side of his/her business that are defined as nonmetropolitan and thus were eligible to register for a grant under the scheme.

To address this anomaly the amending Regulations have introduced new Subregulations 3(5) and 3(6) that state that if a fuel outlet (site 1) in a metropolitan area is located between 2 other fuel sites on a continuous road, and those other fuel sites are located in a non-metropolitan area and are within 5 kilometres of site 1, then site 1 is taken to be in the non-metropolitan area.

The amending Regulations commenced on gazettal.