Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Amendment (Strategic Reserve) Bill 2026. Australia is facing a serious fuel supply shock at the worst possible time, and we have spent the last two weeks trying to explain to the government, particularly the minister for Energy and Climate Change, how serious this problem is. We've been called scaremongers. We've been accused of causing people to panic buy. But the reality is that our constituents, many of them in regional Australia—for whom diesel is not a nice to have; it is an absolute necessity for their business—have been telling us about price shocks and supply issues.

What you do when your constituents tell you there is a serious problem with the way they go about their business, which keeps Australia running and keeps Australia paid for, is you bring it up in the chamber; you bring it up in question time. So we make no apology for trying to get the Minister for Energy and Climate Change to understand the severity of the problem by bringing these examples in. Even last week I said that I had just spoken to a group of grade 6s. One young girl told me, 'Dad ordered a load of diesel three weeks ago and it hasn't arrived yet, and we need diesel to start putting our crops in.' I made the comment that the grade 6 student understood the severity of the issue better than the Minister for Energy and Climate Change.

Diesel is absolutely essential to the operations that we have, particularly in regional Australia, particularly around the industries that pay for Australia, and those industries are mining and agriculture. Now, there's a lot of other very important, great industries going on in Australia but they're underpinned by our resources and our agricultural industries, and they rely on diesel. When the fuel prices rise or there's a supply disruption, that flows on to the price of groceries—I think we're about to see that, unfortunately—freight and logistics, household budgets. This crisis risks the homegrown cost-of-living crisis that we already had because of the mismanagement of the Labor Party and because of the government not taking seriously the concept of increased government spending without productivity dividends leading to inflation. I would have thought that was pretty obvious. But the fact that we already had that uptick means that this comes at a terrible time.

The government's response has been, I think it would be kind to say, chaotic and complacent. For weeks, there's been the denial of a problem, the dismissal of legitimate concerns, with Australians being blamed and us on this side being told we were not serious people. We were seriously laying bare the problems in our electorates. It's nice to see the government actually take it seriously and not only move on a couple of issues, including the fuel excise cut that we suggested last week but also this Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Amendment (Strategic Reserve) Bill that we will be supporting.

My portfolio is agriculture, so I would like to talk a bit about how critical diesel is for agriculture and how time sensitive that is. We are about to go into the winter cropping period, which means that farmers will be sowing seed. In the old days, you had to wait for a rain—the autumn break, whenever it arrived—and then you'd put your seat in. But, now, with new technologies which have seed protection, we can put seed in dry soil, and it will stay there without being attacked by pests and diseases so that, when the rain does come, the seed will come up. That cropping window pretty much starts now. It'll go through, probably, till the end of April and maybe into May, depending on the hectares that people decide to sow.

The supply of diesel right now to the farming areas is absolutely critical. A group of Western Australian wheat and barley farmers told me that they'll probably need 35 litres of diesel a hectare for the entire crop cycle. That's the sowing, the spraying of the weeds, the top dress of urea and then the harvest, so it's significant. They're wanting to know that there is going to be security of supply and that cost is going to be under control, because the cost of that 35 litres and whether you can get it in the first place is part of the decision-making process for how much crop you put in and whether you'll have the margins to make it a viable exercise. It's absolutely critical for agriculture. The coalition's position on this bill is that it will support it. We think this is a sensible measure. In a crisis, the government should act to keep supply chains moving and ensure essential imports like fuel and fertiliser can reach Australia.

This bill allows Export Finance Australia to step in during extraordinary disruptions. It's a sensible objective, and we support practical, targeted action in a crisis. What it does show—and many people before me who have come into this place have been saying this for a number of years—is that Australia is an island continent in a world that has become, over the last four years in particular, more sensitive to geopolitical shocks. The old world order doesn't seem to be holding as much as it used to. Australia has become incredibly reliant on inputs from overseas that come to us via ship. Those shipping lanes could close down because of conflict, and we're already seeing that as a result of the disruption to freight out of the Strait of Hormuz. That freight, critically, for us, has crude oil going to refineries, in particular, in Asia, so that's what is contributing to our current crisis. But the lack of sovereign capacity in relation to those issues should give us all cause for concern.

Let's be clear about what this bill does not do and what it is not. It will not get fuel to empty service stations today. That requires a distribution plan led by the minister, and we've been harping on about wanting to see that over the last two weeks. Whilst there is more fuel moving, and I acknowledge that, there are still issues with fuel getting to regional service stations and regional businesses, including farms and mines. This bill does not reduce prices at the bowser tomorrow. It does not fix the underlying problem that Australia is less prepared than it should be. So this is not a silver bullet. The deeper problem is one of economic management and national capability. After four years in office, Labor has failed to build sovereign fuel capability and has left Australia more exposed and more reliant on overseas supply, and now they want to fund imports of the very fuels it restricts at home. So I think what this whole crisis lays bare to us—if I could paraphrase and call it an inconvenient truth—is that we do rely on fossil fuel liquid fuels a lot more than we, as a nation, and in particular the government, have wanted to make out.

There have been comments that we can just electrify everything. There's been discussion of biodiesel, and I'm not against biodiesel, but it can't ramp up to deliver what is required in the industry at this point. I think, in combination with the general wishful thinking that renewable energy and electrification can get us where we need to go, this type of utopia—it's not in anyone's interest to pretend that things are something when they're not. Many of us are very concerned about the impacts of climate change, but pretending there are solutions out there, when they simply won't work in the real world, could, as I said in my maiden speech, move the problem of emissions offshore, make us poorer and reduce the standard of living of our people. That's not leadership. Wishful thinking is not leadership. Leadership is about saying, 'This is a really wicked problem,' and not pretending that there is some sort of solution out there, one that we would like to work. I would love it if wind turbines and solar panels could solve the problem, but the reality is that they can't.

There's the problem with, as I've said before in this place, base-load power. I was having a debate on Sky News with one of the crossbenchers, and she was saying that base-load power is an antiquated notion and a thing of the past. I was standing in an apple orchard, and I said, 'How are we going to refrigerate these apples when they're harvested if we don't have base-load power—that is, power that's going to be reliably on for 24 hours a day, seven days a week?'

This conflict in the Middle East and this global supply shock are a wake-up call that we're a lot more reliant on liquid fossil fuel, particularly on diesel, than we have been prepared to make out. What is diesel? I think a lot of us know it. I put it into my tractor and I put it into my vehicle. It's a critically important fuel for the world because most heavy machinery relies on diesel, whether it's on a farm, in a mine site or to get the goods that go from those mine sites or farms to the consumers. Whether it's taking iron ore to the port, taking bananas from North Queensland to the people who enjoy those and need healthy fresh fruit in supermarkets across Sydney and Melbourne or taking apples from my electorate to the markets, it's all done with diesel. Diesel is a refined product and the most effective and efficient and the cheapest way to make it is out of crude oil, but a lot of the crude oil comes out of the Middle East, so we are reliant on the Middle East.

We are going to have to look at whether there are other products—feedstocks, if you like—that have a calorific content that enables us to create diesel from not just crude oil. We need to look at those potentials. I acknowledge that across the parliament we're starting to look at some of those, such as biodiesel from canola, and it's been talked about with ethanol. There have been a lot of contributions on what we can do, but we need to go back and say: 'We need diesel. What would happen if there were some supply shocks even worse than the ones we're having now that meant we couldn't get the crude oil to the refinery to make the diesel?' Whether the refinery is in Singapore or Australia, it doesn't matter. If the crude oil doesn't get there, diesel can't be manufactured. Are there other calorific products in Australia, as part of our resources, that we could use to manufacture diesel? I think we need to really look into that.

The irony of this legislation is that it amends the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Act 1991 and the Export Finance Australia mandate. Export Finance Australia's own statement of expectations said, when it was first put in, that it restricts Export Finance Australia from supporting oil, gas or coal and prioritises a renewable-only agenda. I think that goes to the heart of the contradiction that is this whole piece of legislation. As I said, we're supportive of it, but the fact that it's necessary is because, as I said before, I think we wished that things were, when they were not. Under the coalition, Export Finance Australia backed Australia's national interest—whatever that was. But under Labor it's been repurposed to enforce a type of ideology.

We are going to move amendments to this. I support the government in its intent to underwrite companies that want to bring necessary fuels, including petrol and diesel, into Australia. The object of it is good. The coalition will work constructively on this legislation, and we are proposing amendments. We want to remove restrictions on domestic oil, gas and crude production because that just makes sense. If we're getting crude, and it's out of the Middle East, and it's being refined in Singapore, those are global emissions; why not have them here? We will ensure that Export Finance Australia can support the industries that underpin energy security, because resilience cannot be built by blocking investment at home and funding imports offshore.

In closing, it's important, and Australians need immediate relief. I do congratulate the government on moving on the fuel excise; I think that was important. It came as a result of a call from the opposition last week. I think it's good that the government responded to that call in a positive way. We are supporting this bill. I think this is another good initiative by the government. Again, it will be made stronger if the government could look at this amendment and, in the same way they said that fuel excise from the coalition is a good idea, say that these amendments are a good idea too. Let's agree to them and make this legislation stronger.

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