The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) say they are investigating suppliers to remote and regional Australia, responding to complaints of fuel surcharges of more than 70%.
Fuel surcharges have also been reported in the cities as levies at cafes, restaurants, and travel companies.
Matt Grudnoff, senior economist at the Australia Institute, told SBS Examines it's illegal in Australia to mislead customers — for example, by falsely claiming price increases are only due to an increase in costs.
However, some other forms of price gouging are actually legal.
Most people don't know that, but it is not illegal to price gouge.Matt Grudnoff, senior economist, the Australia Institute
"If a firm sees that everybody's talking about price increases and they decide on the back of that to increase their prices, even though their costs haven't gone up, that's perfectly legal," Mr Grudnoff said.
Professor David Byrne, the Ritchie Chair of Economic Research at the University of Melbourne, said healthy competition is important to fight price gouging.
But he said this is a challenge in Australia.
"We have fewer firms supplying us. And so we see that in petrol. We see that in banking, supermarkets ... these companies have market power," he said.
When you only have a few players in a market, the lack of competition means you'll get higher prices.Professor David Byrne, the University of Melbourne
In this episode of SBS Examines, we look at price gouging and ask: how can Australians be prepared for future fuel price shocks?
With additional reporting by SBS Nepali, SBS Russian and SBS Chinese.
