Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

Well, we've seen this morning what this government is all about when it comes to dealing with the national fuel crisis. It is all about politics; it's not about real solutions for the Australian people. We put forward a motion this morning about bringing forward the Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Bill 2026. The government has been saying, for over two weeks, that they wanted that bill passed and passed quickly. So we offered true bipartisanship to get that bill on the papers, get it debated and passed through this House today. What did the government do in response? It attached another bill to this motion, a bill which was only introduced into the parliament this morning—that is, they do not want any scrutiny of it whatsoever. It's pure political game scoring, pure political game playing. This is the problem with this government in a national fuel crisis. It's all about the politics. It's not about what's happening out in the community at the moment.

Why did we want to bring on the ACCC bill? It is because we saw the bill introduced—the shadow Treasurer spent all of last night looking at it. It is a very simple bill. It increases fines. We checked it, we double-checked it, and we thought: 'Okay, there's nothing complex about this bill. It's a very simple bill—'

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