Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Across my electorate, the largest contributor to GDP is certainly agriculture. I just wanted to give a shout-out to those farmers, graziers, service station people, fuel supply wholesalers and distributors who have taken the time to reach out to me personally and to share the level of despair that they are experiencing at the moment as a result of the fuel shortages. It's a real issue in regional Australia, and they're frustrated. They feel that this government is not aware of the problems that are existing out beyond the 60-kilometre zones of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. These are real problems confronting regional Australia and regional Queensland. We don't get the opportunity, when we go to a service station, to make a decision as to whether or not we put $10 or $15 in. On the distances that we have to travel, normally it's a full fill.

I want to share with you a story about a farmer by the name of Tim Russell. Tim's a very good farmer. He used to farm in Victoria. He grows lucerne. He'll do a couple of rotations with barley. He's an exceptionally disciplined grower. Tim has been disciplined because he's got a planting window for him to be able to get his crop in the ground. He ordered fuel a week ago—a thousand litres, just his normal top-up—and he hasn't been able to get that for the last five days. Today he rang me, and I said: 'Mate, ring your supplier again. Ask him what's going on because, when I'm here in the parliament, I'm being reliably told by the energy minister that the boats are arriving on time and that the fuel is coming into the terminals.' So he rang his supplier, an independent who buys on the spot market, and said, 'Can I get my thousand litres today?' and he said, 'No, you can't.' But he was offered 300 litres. The supplier who gives him the fuel said he had been in the industry for 45 years and had never seen it this bad.

So my question to the parliament is: why is it that we've got this panic buying on? There's no doubt that there is panic buying. I think the optics of having the first five independent service stations—there have been many across my electorate: Aratula, Walloon, Forest Hill, Boonah, Beaudesert—where you go to fill up and there is no fuel creates the panic. If we remove the panic by getting the terminals to release the fuel that they've got, the problem disappears. It's not complicated, and I'm going to the minister now to have this conversation with him.

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