We have never had more access to information and an ability to shop around, locally, nationally and internationally.

If the run on toilet paper as the coronavirus pandemic loomed is evidence of anything, it would be that we follow the crowd.

Which is why the RACT, and now state government, want to give people easy access to the best information on petrol pricing.

They hope that it will create a crowd for those offering the lowest prices, and force a shift in the market.

Like a lot of other basics, it's hard to order your fuel from an online retailer or another part of the state or country.

Which means you're locked into paying whatever the pump price is locally.

It's hard to argue that Tasmanians haven't been paying too much for fuel over a long time. Plenty of hours of analysis have revealed the differential between local prices and those north of Bass Strait.

Even when transport costs to get fuel to the state and then the pump is taken into account, we're usually getting the worse end of pricing.

But pricing apps have been available for some time and that alone doesn't seem to have forced the price down in at least our bigger centres.

The question remains as to whether the mandatory, real-time reporting will be the difference?

The bigger question for retailers at this stage may be how the government is going to enforce the new regulation.

What are the proposed penalties for not reporting your fuel pricing?

It appears that there has been little or no input from retailer level.

Whatever happens, it should be simple and something that is easy for the small operator in a regional area to use and report from, as much as a bigger corporate operation.

And it should also not be something that leads to the further loss of those local independent operations, as they are priced out of the market by bigger organisations.

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