Shots were fired at local petrol stations this week when Mr Marshall called on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to come down hard on “price gougers”. Yesterday, unleaded petrol in the city was fetching anywhere from 127.9 to 128.9 cents per litre.

But, according to the Australian Institute of Petroleum, the average price for unleaded petrol in regional NSW and the ACT was 122.4 cents. 

The average price in Sydney was 122.9 cents, after a drop of 15 cents, institute data indicates. 

Mr Marshall was infuriated by the price difference, accusing retailers setting prices locally of colluding with one another to keep prices high. 

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that there is cartel-like behaviour,” he said.

“They’re preying on people who can’t shop around, particularly elderly people.

“There clearly has to be some sort of collusion because it’s not as if one fuel retailer around Armidale is very high and the others are the same price, roughly, as everyone else in the region.

“It’s that they’re all high, they’re all roughly the same price and all high together.

“It’s an absolute rort.”

Mr Marshall said unleaded fuel in Armidale was nine cents a litre more expensive than at Inverell, seven cents more expensive than at Moree, Warialda and Guyra, four-and-a-half cents more expensive than at Tamworth and 14 cents more than at Dubbo. 

“It is ridiculous that fuel pricing in Armidale over the past 52 weeks has consistently been more expensive by more than eight cents a litre for unleaded petrol and more than 13 cents a litre for diesel,” he said.

This is the MP’s latest attack in an ongoing battle against Armidale fuel retailers, speaking about the “price gouging” in Parliament in 2014, and reviving the issue last year. 

“The ACCC announced in August that they had put Armidale as its third regional community in Australia on their watch list,” he said.

“They acknowledged that there were extraordinarily, consistently higher fuel prices in Armidale than almost everywhere else.

“But they couldn’t find any evidence of cartel-like behaviour. 

“That’s not to say that there isn’t any; it’s that they couldn’t find any evidence of any.”

He called for the pricing watchdog to be given more power to penalise retailers. 

“If the ACCC doesn’t have the power to take action in a situation like this, then the law needs to be changed to give the ACCC the ability to take these guys to task,” he said. 

“I would encourage people to write, to email, and to make the complaints online through the ACCC.

“The only way we’re going to get some action take is if the relevant authority, which in this case is the ACCC, is actually forced to take these fuel retailers to task.

“Motorists have had a gutful.”