Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak for the people of Capricornia who are being absolutely smashed by this government's incompetence and their failure to secure Australia's liquid fuel supply. While the city-centric Labor frontbench sits comfortably in Canberra, families and businesses in regional Queensland are facing the grim reality of fuel rationing and skyrocketing prices that flow through to the cost of everything from groceries to power bills. In my electorate of Capricornia, the situation is reaching a breaking point. I'm hearing from local businesses they are being forced to scale back or shut down because they simply cannot get the diesel they need to operate. I had a charter boat company reach out to me in absolute despair—they have been advised that the fuel purchases are being limited to 200 litres in any 24-hour period. You cannot run a charter on 200 litres of fuel. That is a small business' livelihood being stripped away because this government failed to plan.

It gets worse. The backbone of Central Queensland, our cattle industry, is being brought to a standstill. I'm getting calls from desperate farmers. One farmer has 300 head of cattle ready and waiting to go to market, but they can't move them. The trucking company they rely on has a fleet of 40 trucks, but currently only one truck is running because they cannot fuel the rest of the fleet. Think about the impact of that. That cattle farmer is a supplier of Woolworths. This isn't just a regional inconvenience; this is a direct threat to the food security of every Australian.

It's not just the primary producers. I spoke with a business owner in Parkhurst who employs 25 local staff and runs a mechanic repair business. While he managed to secure some fuel over the weekend, his suppliers have told him they cannot guarantee another drop, because they are prioritising service stations. He's now rationing what he has, but he has only two weeks of fuel left and no idea what comes next. This man has been in business for 12 years and he has told me he has never seen anything like this. This is the reality of Labor's Australia—small business owners who have survived for over a decade now facing ruin because the government can't manage a basic commodity like diesel.

And why is this happening? Because this government is flying blind. We have reports that wholesalers have begun rationing petrol and diesel, cutting off transport companies from bulk supplies and forcing them to buy at a much higher retail price. Regional petrol stations are running dry. The government can't even tell us the state of our own reserves because their publicly reported stockholding data has not been updated since December 2025. If the government was competent enough to begin removing diplomatic staff before the international conflict escalated, why on earth didn't they take steps to secure our fuel supply at home?

The coalition understood that fuel security was a national vulnerability, which is why we established a domestic fuel reserve and a minimum stockholding obligation to increase diesel stocks by 40 per cent. We legislated the Fuel Security Act to give the minister the tools to handle exactly this kind of crisis. The tools are there, but this minister lacks the judgement to use them. He should be demanding transparency from providers right now to find out where the shortages are and to get fuel to our tractors and our trucks. Instead, he offers excuses. We have a part-time energy minister who is more focused on his own ideology than on the fact that the Australian economy runs on diesel. Australians were already struggling with a homegrown cost-of-living crisis before any international conflict escalated. Now, because of this government's addiction to spending and regulating, we are seeing the largest decline in living standards in the developed world.

The buck stops with the Prime Minister and the energy minister. They need to stop the excuses, stop blaming panic-buying and start using the powers they have to ensure that cattle in Rockhampton, a charter boat in my electorate or an Ergon energy truck isn't left stranded because the government forgot that regional Australia exists. Capricornia deserves better and Australia deserves a government that takes fuel security seriously.

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