Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Energy Security and Affordability) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very happy to rise to speak on the government's failure to manage fuel supply, amongst a great many other things. During question time today, we saw the minister asked multiple times if he could identify the regions in Australia, the areas in Australia, the cities in Australia, where we were experiencing fuel supply shortages, and he couldn't answer the question. He wasn't across his brief. He couldn't tell us where those were. He turned around briefly, to his backbench, looking for a bit of help. Someone shouted out, 'Mildura.' He said, 'Mildura.' So we got one answer out of him. As it turned out, under questioning from the member for Lindsay, there were fuel supply shortages in Western Sydney, right near the minister's own seat. But he wasn't aware; he's not across the brief.

This is a minister who wants to be president of COP. He wants to focus on those big, fantastic things that a role like that brings. He can focus on international commitments. He can play on the grand stage, but he's not on the ground in Australia, seeing the problems that we're seeing, and this matters. What we heard today was a minister who's taking a completely hands-off approach to dealing with this issue. In fact, he was playing the role of Johnny Fontane in The Godfather: 'Tell me what to do. What do I do, Godfather?' He wants to know how to do the job.

The great thing is we had a wonderful contribution from the member for Wright, a transport professional, who actually spoke to the details of the issue. They've been very helpful.

The minister could look back just a short way in history to see what to do, back to 2021 when we had an AdBlue shortage around Australia. A very similar thing happened. It wasn't available anywhere. People were hoarding. Prices went up. What did we do? Did we stand back and say, 'We're going to take a hands-off approach to this, and Australians are the problem?'

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