Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

The Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Amendment (Strategic Reserve) Bill 2026 provides new powers to do, I think, two very important things—(1) finance the import of fuel and other necessary goods and (2) provide financial derivatives and price point support to purchase, sell and stockpile fuel and other necessary goods to ensure domestic availability only on government direction and to manage exposures as appropriate, providing flexibility to deal with the current fuel crisis now and to stabilise supply and avoid escalation and destabilisation in the future. It will help the government to manage Australia's exposure to risk around acquisition and delivery of fuel in the unpredictable and destabilised global environment that we're currently in. I would like to thank Mr Farrell for the very early morning detailed briefing on this legislation.

I'd like to talk about a couple of issues that surround this issue and really look at how we've got to this place. I do, of course, welcome the government's announcement today on halving the fuel excise to 26.3c per litre for three months and also the cut to the heavy vehicle user charge. This will be very important for the trucking industry. Australia will also adopt a national fuel security plan that has been finalised with the support of the states and territories, which have been collaborating with government over the past couple of weeks to ensure the delivery of a consistent plan. This is absolutely good news. However, to get to this point, there has been enormous pain for motorists and families for weeks, and that damage can't just be undone. Even with the halving of the fuel excise, we're still going to be looking at around $3 a litre for diesel, which is prohibitively expensive.

Talking with many small businesses in my electorate that are in the tourism industry, they've already seen a lot of cancellations over Easter, where people just can't stretch the budget to book and stay and do that travel in their car. Filling up the car is becoming a luxury. There are also hundreds of petrol stations across the country that have run out of different types of fuel or diesel. If I look at my electorate today, unleaded petrol is on average $2.59 a litre, diesel on average is $3.25 a litre and many, many service stations are out of stock.

Let's look at oil prices. Oil prices have risen sharply since the start of the Iran war. Australia uses Singapore refined product benchmark prices. Oil prices had been around US$72 a barrel before the US strikes on Iran. They're now sitting at around US$112 or US$113 a barrel, and the Commonwealth Bank says there is a strong likelihood of the oil price lifting to between US$120 and US$150 a barrel if this conflict continues. Tied very closely to Australia's sovereignty and, I think, Australians' confidence in fuel security is our fuel reserves. Australia is not compliant and, in fact, hasn't been compliant since 2012 with its obligation to hold 90 days worth of fuel reserves under the International Energy Agency treaty. If I say nothing else in this place, surely we can learn from this current crisis that we must be keeping a minimum of 90 days worth of strategic reserves on shore? The government has said just today that we have 39 days of petrol reserves, 30 days of diesel reserves and just 30 days of jet fuel reserves. That's a third of what our obligations are under that treaty.

In contrast, it's been widely reported that the reserves of some other member countries are far higher than ours. Let's look at New Zealand, our close neighbours. They have 49 days worth on land. Japan has 254 days; South Korea, 208 days; France, 108 days; and Spain, 113 days. Due to, I think, a complacency from extended peacetime, we have made our risk and exposure so great. It was just over 20 years ago that Australia had eight oil refineries, and most of our demand for our fuel was managed domestically. Now we just have two that remain, in Geelong and Brisbane, and neither of them is really fit for purpose. Neither of them, to my understanding, is able to process and refine diesel, which is the bulk of the fuel consumed in Australia. So now Australia imports around 90 per cent of its refined fuel. How crazy is that?

If we learn nothing else from this crisis, we as a nation must truly take sovereignty as a serious issue. As the Canadian prime minister said, 'A country that can't fuel itself, feed itself or defend itself has very few options.' I urge the government not only to have a minimum of 90 days of fuel on Australian shores—I must say, this is a problem that was created by both governments. I remember that the previous government had tickets in Texas, which was just a ridiculous idea. We didn't have fuel onshore. We also must look to re-establish our refineries. The fact that we just have two refineries on the east coast of Australia is deeply concerning. It's actually farcical. It's unbelievable that a nation as large as Australia would have that. Anyone with an interest in geopolitics can see the vulnerability. If China decides that they're going to go into conflict with Taiwan and somehow Australia is involved in that, the shipping lanes will stop. This will be nothing compared to that as an issue.

We need to be drilling more of our own domestic product, we need to be refining this product and we need to take Australian sovereignty seriously because we need to fuel ourselves and we need to be able to feed ourselves; otherwise, we as a nation can't defend ourselves.

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