Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You would think it might be, member for Nicholls, but I suspect not. The difficulty there is the fact that farmers are only able to half fill their tanks. They need full tanks. Then, of course, they're having to put their tanks under lock and key—that situation is alarming too—because there have been widespread reports of theft. The member for Sydney is coming in to listen to my contribution, giving me a little wave there! She would know too how important regional Australia is. She would know how important it is to make sure that we absolutely get the fuel and, particularly, the diesel to our farmers. As I said before, they are the greatest risk takers in this nation, and, if they don't get their fuel stocks in time for planting season, then we are going to be in a world of hurt—not only for our exports but for our food security.

The government has finally decided that urgent action is necessary. After days and days of procrastination and delay and saying that there was no issue here, they finally realised that there was an issue and they have done something about the fuel excise and done something about road user charges. I would say it's not too little, too late, but there are other measures that this government is going to have to urgently adopt, and it's going to be a continuous thing to ensure that our regional people get access to fuel, particularly before Easter, which is largely a time when people like to travel from the city to the country. When it comes to the cities, there was all this talk about using public transport. We saw the reports only this morning of how infrastructure broke down and Sydney trains ground to a halt. We can't always rely on that, particularly with the Labor government in Macquarie Street.

This is an urgent issue. It needs to be addressed. It needs to be addressed better by this government, which has been asleep at the wheel.

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