Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to have the opportunity to speak on today's matter of public importance. The topic is the failure of the government to secure adequate fuel supplies, pushing up the cost of living across the economy. I want to bring it back to my electorate of O'Connor and how that's impacting there, but I first want to go back to where we were at the start of the Middle East conflict that we're currently experiencing. That was the December quarter. Inflation was up, running at 3.8 per cent nationally, but in Western Australia that number was 4.9 per cent. We were already running at nearly five per cent inflation in O'Connor prior to the Middle East conflict and prior to the almost doubling of fuel prices. I would suspect that across my electorate of O'Connor those numbers would be slightly higher. What that has led to is two hikes in interest rates by the Reserve Bank, which is impacting not only mortgage holders but also small business farmers and those in the mining community who are borrowing money, particularly in the contracting part of the industry. People are borrowing money to buy machinery and other plant equipment. Government spending is running at 40-year highs, at 28 per cent of gross domestic product, which is fuelling this inflation. We've heard that from the Governor of the Reserve Bank.

I'll go back to O'Connor and where we're at today with the impact of the Middle East conflict. I was in the electorate on Friday. I was travelling over to Canberra over the weekend. Fuel prices for diesel, in particular, were well over $3 by that stage, and they've probably increased in the last day or two. What does that mean for the cost of living? For people that live in the electorate of O'Connor, their food, their groceries and their goods have to travel. If you live in Kalgoorlie, it's 600 kilometres from Perth by road. If you live in Esperance, it's 700 kilometres. If you live in Albany, it's 400 kilometres—413 to be exact. All of the trucking operators, because they have to—they have to make a living; they have to make a profit to keep their businesses viable—have put fuel surcharges on that freight. What we're starting to see now is the cost of goods on the supermarket shelf rising. That has a direct impact on people. Obviously when they go and fill up their cars at the service station, they're getting a $40 to $60 extra whack at that point on top of the interest rate rises that we've already talked about.

Looking a bit further ahead, our farming community in the horticultural sector are currently harvesting. They are paying more for their fuel. The trucks to move that produce from, for example, Dom Della's farm at Pemberton to the potato packing plant in Perth—that's a three-hour, 300-kilometre haul. That is adding to the cost of those potatoes, and then they've got to be transported back out to the regions. These are the direct impacts that we're seeing now.

I want to talk a little bit about petrol rationing, which has been discussed here today. The minister has kind of dismissed it as one of the many options on the table. But let me tell you: petrol rationing is happening today in my seat of O'Connor. What is happening is that independent fuel distributors are being cut back to as low as 25 per cent of their normal allocations. That means that, if they've got a range of fuel stations, those fuel stations get 25 per cent. When the minister was asked by me in question time today, 'How many service stations have run out of fuel?' he reeled off, 'About 400,' but he said that six were in Western Australia. Those numbers are not up to date. What happens is that, if you're a service station, you're getting 25 per cent of your normal allocation. So you've got enough fuel to get going in the morning. When the minister answered that question, it was around midday in WA, and he said there were six service stations across WA that had run out of at least one type of fuel. I can guarantee you that by five o'clock this evening there will be over 100 service stations across my electorate that have run out of their 25 per cent allocation. That is fuel rationing. There is no other way to describe that. The majors are restricting the amount of fuel that they are allowing the independent distributors across my electorate of O'Connor to have on a daily basis.

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