Government Proposes Petrol Cartel Enforcement Legislation

I'm still astounded by the Australian Government's proposed Fuel-Watch scheme. Working at its best, Fuel-Watch might provide an extremely marginal decrease in petrol prices but it seems far more likely to me that Fuel-Watch will have the exact opposite effect!

The most difficult part about enforcing a cartel agreement with your competitors is monitoring their behaviour and making sure that they stick to the cartel's agreed-upon price. In Fuel-Watch, the government is providing just such a mechanism, the perfect way for petrol stations to enforce any cartel-like agreements. All that the petrol stations need to do now is agree on a monopoly-level price and rake in the profits while the government works hard to enforce their cartel agreement!

Does anyone have a clue in the Rudd government? (Don't take that as an endorsement of the Liberal Party, the opposition is no better, if not considerably worse...) *sigh*