Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gorton for her question and also thank her for her advocacy for a great freight route, the Western Highway, that runs right along the spine of both of our electorates. This morning I again met with representatives from the transport and fuel sector. We are ensuring that government, industry, suppliers and unions are operating from the same information so that, when we need to move quickly, we can.

As a government, we have so far released 20 per cent of the minimum stockholding obligation for petrol and diesel, particularly directing it to regional communities. We've appointed the Fuel Supply Task Force Coordinator, Anthea Harris, to work with states and industry to ensure fuel keeps flowing to where it is needed. We've amended the fuel standards for petrol and now the flashpoint for diesel to make sure that we can get more supply onto the market. We've passed legislation—just before!—in the House to strengthen the ACCC's hand, and we continue to monitor airlines and airfares closely. We're working with regional partners like Singapore and Korea to shore up supplies, strengthen our energy security and support the flow of essential goods. The PM, of course, will hold another National Cabinet on the fuel supply, to ensure that we're getting that coordinated response right the way across the country, on Monday.

We said we would move quickly to introduce to the House changes to the Fair Work Act to ensure that our truck drivers and our logistics companies can quickly renegotiate their rates with Australia's major retailers. And today we moved to do just that, because our freight industry cannot bear the cost of increased fuel prices alone, because a strong transport sector ensures our food moves from our farms to our tables, goods from warehouses to our shopfronts and fuel from our refineries to our petrol bowsers. To ensure that the transport industry remains strong, they need to have the levers to adjust quickly to what we know is a changing environment.

Our amendments have been welcomed by the Australian Trucking Association, National Road Freighters Association, Road Transport Association and the TWU. They told us they were vital and urgent, but we know who didn't seem to welcome the urgency of these amendments. It was those opposite. When this was brought up for debate today, their argument was that they couldn't possibly support a quicker contract chain order, because we were moving too fast. The member for Cook said that he'd spoken to a couple of trucking companies who are worried about going insolvent, and then he and his Liberal colleagues literally, again, scuttled out of this chamber instead of voting for these changes that the trucking industry have called as being urgent.

The Leader of the Opposition, who's been busy there interjecting, couldn't even be bothered to turn up for the debate at all. Our parliament has been asked to act to support the trucking industry. They might have a lot of people with 'leader' in their title over there opposite, but they are surely lacking in leadership when it comes to what is an important issue for our truck industry. (Time expired)

See this speech in context