Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

If the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors wants to make a contribution, he can stand up and explain what he's doing to ensure fuel is reaching its rightful destination—the people who are trying to provide care for older people in Australia.

Okay, so, the aged-care minister wants to keep intervening. Now, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, when you do stand up and make a speech, perhaps you can tell Australians about the 100,000 people who are waiting to receive the care-at-home packages. Perhaps you can tell Australians about the 4,000 people who have died waiting for a care-at-home package.

Now, the aged-care minister keeps chipping away. He should focus on his day job as well. The Prime Minister finally convened a national cabinet meeting after knowing we had a problem, but the minister didn't bother going. So Australians are saying to this minister: simply do your day job and ensure the flow of fuel reaches the communities which need it most. Now, going to this crisis, the minister had two important jobs. He had to secure supply and get it to the critical industries that need it the most, primarily in regional Australia, and he had to prevent price gouging. If we look at the evidence over the last three weeks, we can see, once again, this minister has failed at both of those jobs.

The coalition will be supporting the legislation before the chamber today with some of our own amendments, because we will always act in the national interest, particularly in the interests of those small-business people, those farmers, those fishermen, the foresters and the miners who rely on a stable supply of fuel to create the wealth that our nation relies upon.

But I would urge the minister, going forward, to start listening to himself and to some of the contributions of peak bodies around Australia on this critical issue. Just this week, the National Farmers' Federation put out a media statement calling on the national cabinet to prioritise food supply. Now, Deputy Speaker Boyce, you understand, I understand and the regional members understand that fuel supply is food supply. The NFF has said that they want to see agriculture-specific plans to secure fuel supply for farmers and fishers, including clear trigger points for government action. They also want to see a clear direction on fertiliser supply into the medium term, including the establishment of a dedicated fertiliser roundtable and the government underwriting the purchase of fertiliser by the private sector, as it does for fuel. And they want to see targeted small-business support for those across the supply chain facing acute financial pressure.

The president of the NFF, Hamish McIntyre, has made it very clear why this is important, saying:

Farming is always a gamble, but right now too much is out of farmers' control. Our reliance on imported inputs is again being exposed, and it's putting farm businesses under serious strain.

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At the end of the day, if farmers can't access fuel and fertiliser, they can't produce food. It's as simple as that.

So I do urge the minister to listen to the peak bodies, particularly around regional Australia, when he seeks to deal with the issues going forward. Obviously, everyone in this chamber hopes the war in Iran ends quickly and supplies are restored. But if the situation deteriorates further, Australians have a right to know what the government is planning. We want to see more openness and transparency in this place when it comes to the plans the government is making. Is it looking at demand management? Is it looking at fuel rationing? Is it looking at fuel mandates? We believe it should be focused on supply, but we want to know what other plans the government is looking at may look like in the weeks and months ahead if this situation deteriorates. We would be concerned that demand management measures might have a further chilling effect on the economy. We're already seeing our farmers and others making decisions on their business structure to try and accommodate the increased cost of fuel and the infrequency of supply. So we do want to know whether the government has plans, if conditions deteriorate, to prioritise our critical industries, such as agriculture, fishing, mining, the transport sector, health and emergency services and aged-care services. What is the government planning if this situation deteriorates further?

The opposition would argue that we are facing this fuel crisis at the worst possible time. After four years of economic mismanagement by the Albanese government, households are already poorer and they are already more exposed. They can't afford more price shocks like this. Australians, as all the economic evidence points to, are already working harder. They're paying more and they're getting less. And now this supply shock is compounding that pressure right across our nation but particularly in the outer suburbs and in rural and regional areas, where liquid fuels are a vital part of the social and economic life of our communities.

This is not an abstract issue. I'm sure everyone in this chamber is beginning to understand that fuel adds to the cost of everything. When the fuel supply is disrupted and prices rise, it immediately flows through to prices that our families are paying at the grocery check-outs in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. It impacts on our freight. It impacts on farming. Obviously, we want to see the government taking action that actually makes a difference to get the fuel to where it's needed and to take those price pressures off Australian families and business people and our farming sector.

What makes this situation worse, though, is that Australia entered this crisis in a weaker position than it should have. After four years, Labor have failed to build our sovereign fuel capability. Instead, they now want to fund imports of the very fuels that they have restricted here at home. If these fuels are important enough to stockpile, they are important enough to support domestically. There needs to be recognition in this place and throughout the nation that the world has changed dramatically in the past 10 years but even more so in the last four or five years. Our sovereign capability to make more things in Australia, whether it be fuel, fertiliser or other critical inputs, has become more and more exposed when the just-in-time supply chains are disrupted, as they have been by the war in Iran.

The contrast here is very clear. The former coalition government took practical steps to strengthen our fuel security—securing our last refineries, legislating the Fuel Security Act and establishing minimum stockholding obligations. We focused in government on capability, resilience and making sure Australia could stand on its own two feet. Let's be clear, though. We will support practical measures that improve supply in a crisis, including this bill. But also it's important to reinforce a simple fact. This is not a silver bullet in terms of a legislative response to the crisis Australians are facing. It won't get the fuel to empty service stations today and it won't bring down prices for families tomorrow. That is why we encourage the government to continue to act in the interests of our industries and the interests of Australian families. It should remove the barriers it's put in place on domestic production. It should back Australian energy supply and ensure fuel can get to where it's needed across the country. Most importantly, it should immediately implement cost-of-living relief measures by halving the fuel excise and the road user charge, which the coalition proposed to fully and responsibly offset, to avoid any inflationary pressures. The government could take that action today. The government could provide immediate cost-of-living relief by reducing the fuel excise, halving it, and halving the road user charge in the interests of Australian families and the Australian transport sector. I think the government probably will act in relation to those levies. I urge them to follow the approach of the coalition by fully offsetting those reductions that we have proposed.

When fuel costs rise, that flows straight through to our groceries, to our freight, to our farmers and to our small businesses. At a time when Australian living standards are going backwards, this is applying enormous pressure on families as they try to manage their household budgets. The coalition will always support practical, targeted action that helps secure supply and stabilises critical supply chains. This bill is designed to do that. It allows Export Finance Australia to step in during extraordinary disruptions, supporting the financing, insurance and logistics needed to secure essential imports like fuel and fertiliser. We believe it's a sensible objective. In a crisis, the government should be prepared to act quickly to keep supply chains moving and to ensure essential goods can reach Australians quickly. That is why we have supported the bill. The member for Wannon will be moving amendments to it at a later time in the House today.

I would also point out that there are risks in the supply chain that are not covered by this bill. While this bill will seek to underwrite the risks faced by major fuel companies, there are small-business owners and independent fuel distributors in our nation who are saying: 'What about our risk? What about our risk if we're buying fuel at these inflated prices?' If the war ends, which we all sincerely hope it does, and prices drop quickly, what about the risks they are carrying terms of the fuel in their tanks, having bought at an inflated price and then having to sell into a market that is cheaper?

You might say that's a good problem to have and that Australian consumers will benefit from those lower fuel prices, and I hope that day comes sooner rather than later. But if we're going to be in the business of underwriting these major fuel companies through legislation like this, the independent suppliers and the retailers, those mum and dad operators, are right to be raising their concerns. 'What about the small-business viability of the operation I'm running in rural and regional Australia?' Perhaps you're the sole operator. When you're already doing it tough, you ask, 'Is the government aware of the risk we're exposed to?' In the past we have seen governments provide direct financial support after crises, when there is a natural disaster or tourism related incident, and those businesses are now saying, 'What does it look like for our business going forward if the government is prepared to make decisions like this, through legislation, to underwrite the risk of these major suppliers?'

I will finish where I started, and just make the very simple point that Australians are hurting. Australians are feeling the pain of the insecurity surrounding the fuel crisis and fertiliser crisis. They want to see coordinated national leadership by this government. And they want the government to understand that when the opposition raises concerns in relation to fuel supply, don't say we're scaremongering. Acknowledge that we are here to do our job, on behalf of rural and regional Australians, to make sure the fuel gets to where it's needed to the most at a time of critical importance for our nation.

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