Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question and I reiterate the figures I revealed earlier in question time. For example, Ampol's distribution to regional Queensland, which is up very substantially, year on year, shows that the entire industry is working hard to catch up with the massive spike in demand that we saw after 28 February. I would have thought the honourable member would welcome that increase in supply and recognise that it is working, and will work, to deal with those shortages, which we all agree are unacceptable. As I've said, there are so many people working so hard across government and across industry, collaboratively, to see this dealt with. That is helpful.

I will tell the House what is unhelpful—not recognising that Australia's fuel supply is secure, not accepting the fact that the ships that have been cancelled have been replaced and misleading Australians that somehow some of the fuel from our refineries is being exported at the moment, which just isn't true, and linking it somehow to net zero. That is all untrue and unhelpful. This is a time for the nation to come together. We'll be working hard—we are working hard and have been working hard—to ensure that Australians have access to fuel not only over Easter, which the honourable member just asked me about, but—

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