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

I come from Australia's largest inland city, a beautiful part of the world—a place that you know well, Deputy Speaker Boyce. For weeks now, this fuel supply crisis has been hurting our community. On the border, out at Dalby, we saw petrol stations run dry. I heard from farmers in that area who had to stop their harvests midway through because they did not have fuel available to them. At Wyreema, we saw the pumps run dry. I heard from families who could not afford the extra fuel costs in driving out to see elderly parents; those trips were cancelled for the weekend. In Toowoomba, two petrol stations on Taylor Street were closed down; they ran out of gas. This has impacted our community terribly.

At the start of this, Labor pretended there was no supply issue. They pretended there was no problem. It was only late on Thursday of the last sitting week that Minister Bowen admitted that Australia had a crisis. That word slipped out of his mouth, I think accidentally. That wasn't the plan; he was forced into admitting that after the pressure we applied to him. Since then, he's been talking very tough about what he's going to do to those who are price gouging, who are using this opportunity to hurt others. He's been boasting for two weeks about the ACCC enforcement bill that he was going to bring and that he was going to crack down on these people. But he sat on it for two weeks.

So, this morning, we called on the government to bring that legislation forward. But just before that, at 9.15 this morning—less than two hours ago—another bill was introduced to this place: the Fair Work Amendment (Fairer Fuel) Bill. It was introduced with seven minutes of speech describing it—seven minutes of the government describing that bill. That's all we got. We had no opportunity to debate it. This hasn't been through any level of scrutiny whatsoever. That's the usual process, by the way: you introduce a bill, and then we go through debate later on. But what did Labor try to do when we asked them to bring forward this bill that they've been boasting about—beating their chests about how strong they were going to be—to crack down on these people who are taking advantage of Australians? What did they do? They used the most disgusting, cunning political techniques to try and ram through a bill that has nothing to do with this. It might be a good bill. There might be things in it that we like. We might agree to it. But we would like the opportunity to debate that bill—for it to go through the proper process.

That's what we're calling for. That's what we're brought to this place to do—to debate bills and hopefully create a better set of rules for Australia to work within. Instead of that opportunity being given to representatives of communities like mine, this government decided to ram that bill through underneath the Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Bill, which we support. We came here and moved a suspension of standing orders to bring forward this legislation that they had been sitting on and boasting about. It was the only talking point that they could give when they were put under pressure and asked what they were going to do about the fuel supply crisis—'We're going to crack down.' So we said, 'Bring it on.' And the response, from a government whose integrity has been called into question time and time again and who refuse to stand and be held to account to the normal practices of parliament, has been absolutely disgusting. We've watched it here today.

I go back to this point: the reason we called for the ACCC enforcement bill to be brought forward was that we come from communities where we're seeing these problems. We're talking to these people. We're hearing from business owners who simply cannot afford the additional cashflow that an extra dollar per litre is putting on them. That's why we called to bring this forward. We're trying to look after our communities and we have a government who won't do anything.

I'm going to finish on one last point. The fair work amendment that they've brought forward may the best thing they've ever done. Who knows? They could have been struck by a fit of composure and put something that's actually worthwhile on the table. We've heard all about how they care about truckies; the only truckie in this place is over there. I care about that bloke. I care about his democratic rights to be able to scrutinise and debate a bill that's been put before the parliament. This has been an absolute disgrace from this government.

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