news / cover story
Time to stand up to petrol prices We need a petrol price revolution in this town and we need it now, says mad-ashell MARK PARTON
Aimee Zardo with Dale Murray, of the Salvos... “I’m absolutely amazed. If it wasn’t for The Salvation Army, I’d probably be dead,” she says. Photo by Brent McDonald
To hell and back: when Aimee’s world went wrong FOUR months ago, Aimee Zardo woke to find herself alone and fighting for her life in hospital after overdosing on alcohol for the sixth time in two months. “There were several other elderly women there, dying of old age, and their families were with them, it was peaceful,” Aimee, of Jerrabomberra, says. “Then I was in the corner, half their age, fighting for my life – yet I had done it to myself.” Aimee describes it as the lowest point of a seven-year drug and alcohol addiction, which spurred from postnatal depression, the death of her father and moving to Australia from New York with her husband and son. “After the birth of my son I started to panic and the fear of raising him wrong just took over,” she says. “I discovered that alcohol and drugs would relieve that pain... I thought I could control it, but the more I tried, the more it controlled me.” A few drinks to relax gradually spiralled to “countless” glasses a day, and drugs quickly followed. Then one day Aimee’s husband came home to find her lying unconscious on the floor, moments from death. “If he was an hour later, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now,” she says.
6 CityNews May 16–23
LAURA EDWARDS meets a woman who has been lifted from the depths of utter despair and likely death by the Salvos, who saw ‘a flicker of light’ in her “I even ended up attempting to take my own life to end the misery because I could not get out of the dark hole I was in.” It wasn’t until she sought help from The Salvation Army in Canberra four months ago, that she finally found a way out. “I came to The Salvation Army broken, really down to no hope at all, but they saw a flicker of light in me, and they grabbed on to that,” Aimee says. “I didn’t even expect that something could save me. I figured it was the end of me, and the end of being a mum to my son. With amazing compassion and kindness, and non-judgmental understanding, they’ve guided me out of that darkness. “I’m absolutely amazed. If it wasn’t for The Salvation Army, I’d probably be dead.” Aimee wants to use her experience to promote the The Salvation Army’s Red Shield Appeal, which raises money for programs that help people like her. “I want people to know addiction is a progressive disease, it doesn’t discriminate,” Aimee says. “It’s the lady next door, like me. The wife,
the mother, the daughter. It takes a hold of you and so many other women suffer in silence because they’re so afraid to come out and say it, because of that stigma that it’s a mother.” Aimee is currently devoting her time to speaking at events run by The Salvation Army and plans to study counselling to help other addicts. For now, she is focusing on recovery and piecing her life back together, after “losing everything” from the addiction, including her husband. “The Salvation Army is working with both my husband and son to educate them on my illness as it was obviously incredibly difficult on them too, and I do hope for a reconciliation,” Aimee says. “Today I feel a sense of peace, I feel capable of getting on with my life, that my son can finally have his mother back, that I’m actually worth every breath I take on this planet.” The Salvation Army’s Red Shield Appeal will be held throughout May and its annual doorknock takes place over the weekend of May 25-26. Donations to 137258 or salvos.org.au
I HAVE been wracking my brain trying to come up with a sensible reason behind our petrol prices in Canberra being up to 30 cents a litre higher than what’s on offer in Sydney and Melbourne. There isn’t one, other than we’re being taken as fools. In the past month the larger capital cities have benefited from serious petrol price discounting and we in Canberra have paid for it. After all, everyone’s happy to make a big quid out of those fat public servants, because as you know, everyone earns a fortune in Canberra! The ACCC, the ACT Government and the NRMA continue to suggest to me that this situation has arisen because we don’t have many genuinely independent petrol outlets in Canberra. Our market is dominated by Caltex and Shell who have linked arms with Woolworths and Coles. It works exceptionally well for those retailers, but not so well for us. I was speaking to an independent operator from Melbourne with outlets close to Woolies’ petrol stations. He told me that when the whole shopper docket thing started, those stations lost 15 per cent of their turnover overnight and those close to both Coles and Woolies petrol outlets lost 30 per cent. Without a high volume, they found it more difficult to fight the majors on price.
Consumers adopted the shopper-docket concept in the belief it would save them money and, in the short term, it did. In the longer term, it succeeds only in clearing out the competition and providing a virtual duopoly for Caltex and Shell. When Mobil exited the Australian petroleum landscape, the ACCC should have broken the chain up and distributed it to genuine independent operators. They claim not to have the power to do this and all of those outlets ended up under the 7/11 banner. Here in Canberra, the 7/11s mimic the other two majors on price and United follows suit. All of them are happy to take a higher margin out of Canberra because Canberra just lays back, thinks of England, and takes it. I’m sick of it and I’m sure you are, too. We would cop a five or seven-cent differential between here and Sydney, but we shouldn’t have to wear 30 cents. We need a petrol price revolution in this town and we need it now. Through my radio station, I’ve started an online petition to try to force a change. You can find the petition through the station website www.2cc.net. au . Together, I think we can make a change. Mark Parton is the breakfast announcer on 2CC.