The Australian people are being enticed towards a FuelWatch scheme because you have told them it will bring down the price of petrol. You base that on the premise of an econometric model. The model was devised, tabulated and constructed in your office and nobody but the people inside your office have had anything to do with it.
Senator Barnaby Joyce, Senate Estimates, 5 June 2008.
This paper argues that the national FuelWatch scheme has not been adequately analysed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The econometric analysis that has been undertaken is incomplete, the upshot being that the ACCC has favoured a scheme to fix prices, retard competition and thereby harm consumers, on the basis of analysis and information that either does not exist, or is not in the public domain.