Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Amendment (Strategic Reserve) Bill 2026 is not the solution to Australia's energy security. It is a necessary short-term circuit breaker during a fuel shock, but it's a loud admission that our national resilience remains dangerously dependent on legacy fossil fuel markets. I support the intent of this legislation to keep Australia moving, prevent regional communities from running out of fuel and prevent a short-term supply squeeze turning into a broader economic hit. But I will say the quiet part out loud: underwriting extra fuel cargoes does not address the structural problem. If we only do more imported fuel faster, we'll be right back here at the next geopolitical flashpoint.

Climate resilience is national resilience and economic resilience; we've been saying this for years in this place. When climate hazards worsen, supply chains and essential services get hit. When fossil fuel markets spike, households and businesses get hit. The lesson is that genuine resilience means reducing long-term exposure to these kinds of disruptions. If we're serious about fuel and energy security, we must accelerate electrification—and fast. Electric transport is not an extra; it's a strategic shield against imported oil volatility.

What is driving this bill is not a theoretical risk. It's an active disruption in global oil markets, with sharp price volatility and supply uncertainty tied to the conflict involving the US and Israel's actions in Iran and the resulting disruption around the Strait of Hormuz. Many experts predict that the disruptions will continue to expand, and the conflict may well last for a lot longer than hoped. Australia is structurally exposed because we import most of our fuel and rely on international shipping arriving on schedule. When ships cancel or prices jump, we feel it at the bowser and then in freight, groceries and inflation.

The government's immediate crisis settings have already included temporarily releasing up to 20 per cent of the minimum stockholding obligation for petrol and diesel, freeing up to 762 million litres targeted to relieve regional pressures; and actively monitoring stocks and arrivals while warning against panic buying and unsafe stockpiling.

Australia also has international obligations. Under the international energy program treaty settings, member countries are expected to hold oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of oil reserves and be ready for collective action during major disruptions. Australia has not met this goal, and I don't understand that it's one of the government's intentions. Australia briefly leased space in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2020 and then sold that oil in 2022. Angus Taylor, Leader of the Opposition, was the minister responsible for that decision to lease space and then subsequently sell it off on the international market. Even when that arrangement existed, it was a small volume and slow to access and it was crude, not ready-to-use fuel.

Fuel security policy in recent years has focused heavily on stockholding obligations and supporting our remaining domestic refineries, but this treats supply as the only lever while underinvesting in the long-term demand solution, which is electrifying transport. It was the Morrison coalition government that helped lead us into this mess. Its scaremongering campaign that electric vehicles would ruin the weekend was not just silly politics; it was short sighted and really reckless. It was a symptom of a deeper failure to plan for the economic and energy transitions already underway. If the major parties had got with the program earlier and engaged seriously with the needs of a 21st century economy, Australia could have built far greater economic resilience by now.

The central idea in this legislation is sound, and I will support it to address a temporary emergency situation. It gives Export Finance Australia a flexible set of tools—insurance, derivatives, loans and other arrangements—to derisk additional cargoes to encourage suppliers to bid for discretionary shipments. But these laws need guardrails to ensure these powers are temporary and not used to finance fossil fuels for any longer than would address the immediate fuel security crisis. To that end, I would urge the government to consider a much earlier period of review for this legislation.

Food security and regional resilience are directly affected in the current crisis. When the diesel price spikes or supply tightens, there is no doubt that farmers and freight feel it first and then everyone pays at the check-out. That is exactly why fuel security is not just an energy policy; it's a cost-of-living and national resilience policy. Underwriting fuel cargoes must be paired with an explicit funded electrification plan where possible. Otherwise we'll just keep paying to delay our own economic and national resilience.

If we are to achieve genuine resilience, our transport sector must be electrified. That means buses, fleets, charging infrastructure and heavy vehicles. In fact, for the naysayers who don't think it's possible, just today the Parliamentary Friends of Electric Vehicles and Future Fuels are hosting the Freight Forward summit, with incredible advances and amazing technology and options when it comes to electric heavy vehicle freight options. The impacts of climate change will multiply these risks. Geopolitical instability and wars get magnified by further events. Australia's own National Climate Risk Assessment identifies climate risks across essential goods and services, the economy, infrastructure and national security systems. Resilience that ignores climate change is short lived.

Countries that electrify faster are less exposed to oil price shocks in their day-to-day economies. China's transformation is the obvious example for all the naysayers who, again, always want to point to the negatives. China has pushed electrification hard. Electric cars were almost half of all car sales there in 2024, with over 11 million cars sold, and electrification across the broader economy is proceeding faster than in the US or the EU by the International Energy Agency's measures. That is a structural buffer against oil price shocks because a bigger share of mobility and industry runs on domestically generated electricity instead of imported oil. China has been investing in renewable energy independence at scale since the early 2000s. Whilst it's not immune to this fuel shock, China is actually less exposed than many nations on the transport side because it has electrified more of its economy. That's allowing the Chinese government to introduce fuel price caps, cushioning consumers from price shocks. So it's really important that we look around to see how Australia can do better.

We have to treat EV uptake as a fuel security program, not just a culture war as many in this place like to do. Keeping Australians off imported petrol is a strategic objective. It also reduces household exposure to global price spikes permanently, not temporarily. This includes keeping the fringe benefit tax exemption for EVs. Treasury forecasting shows that EV uptake has exceeded early expectation. EVs rose from under two per cent of new sales when the policy began to around 10 per cent of new sales now, with Treasury estimating almost 100,000 vehicles benefiting from the exemption—faster than expected. By all accounts, sales of EVs are now booming as people realise the only way they can in fact inoculate themselves from fuel price shocks is by choosing that, not hybrid and not something that continues to rely on imported fuel.

On public transport, again China demonstrates the scale question too. It has the world's highest stock share of electric buses. The international energy agency puts it at around 30 per cent of bus stocks, built over years of industrial policy and procurement. Meanwhile, Australia is still overwhelmingly running diesel fleets, and even recent reporting puts our electric bus share at about one per cent. So, the fuel crisis demonstrates exactly what we need to urgently electrify our economy and end our dependence on legacy fossil fuels.

The other component of this legislation lays the groundwork for a critical mineral strategy reserve by giving Export Finance Australia new powers to enter offtake arrangements, facilitate contracts and stockpile key minerals. These are mechanisms that can give emerging projects commercial certainty, attract investment and increase Australia's involvement in clean energy supply chains. For too long we've been comfortable digging up strategic materials while allowing refining, processing and high-value manufacturing to happen elsewhere. That needs to stop. So I can support emergency underwriting to keep Australia moving through this short-term shock, but we can't remain complacent while dependent on legacy fossil fuel energies. Those in this place who want to continue the culture wars about this are simply reckless and negligent to what Australians are going to face in the future. The strategic reserve that matters most is the one that reduces oil dependence. Keep the EV FBT exemption, accelerate charging and public transport electrification, and treat climate resilience as a foundation of national and economic resilience.

I welcome the announcements today from the government in relation to the assistance to Australians when it comes to the fuel excise, the halving of the excise, and in relation to freight. But, again, these are going to come as massive hits to the budget. There is no doubt that budget repair is needed. That's why I urge the government to look at the fuel excise rebate. Over $10 billion going to mining has to stop. It simply cannot continue that we have the budget in the state that it's in with the consequences and the crisis we have now.

Finally, there is no doubt that it's just unconscionable that we can continue to have excess wartime export profits by the gas industry. The government just needs to admit that it got the settings of the PRRT wrong. Either change those settings or introduce a 25 per cent export tax. We have to balance the budget. We have to build resilience and domestic energy security and, to do that, it will cost. We need to ensure that is done in a balanced and measurable way. So to all those in this place who want to continue culture wars about the risks and the very serious consequences for the future, I would say get with the times.

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