Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have listened very closely to the contributions from those opposite, and I know that they speak with great passion for their constituents and farmers. If only they could convert that passion into a plan to bring more fuel into this country in the short-term, because they don't have a plan.

During times of national crises, Australians want us to pull together. They want us to work together—the coalition, the crossbench— across the parliament in the national interest. And Australians do that best. We've seen that in natural disasters, with mates helping mates. We saw that during the global financial crisis, when the opposition, at the time, supported the bank deposit guarantee. And we saw that during COVID and lockdowns when the Labor opposition, at the time, supported JobKeeper to make sure that people were still getting paid. These were big shocks to our country, external to anything caused by any government at the time, but we all pulled together to get through.

What we are facing at the moment is another big challenge. The Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said:

This crisis, as things stand now, is two oil crises and one gas crisis put … together.

This is a time when we should be pulling together and working in the national interest. And we are. Even the member for New England, the One Nation member, is pulling together and willing to pitch in. The only people who aren't are those opposite. I want to be very specific when I refer to those opposite, because the crossbench have also been willing to contribute. I am talking about the Liberal and National members. Let's look at what they've been saying. Matt Canavan said:

Now thanks to Labor's war on fossil fuels Australians are at breaking point.

What a ridiculous statement! We are in this situation not because of our climate change agenda but because of the war in Iran. Let's get the facts straight. Senator Michaelia Cash said:

… the government needs to come clean with the Australian people, and I have no confidence …

At a time when we need people to trust in government, when we need people to listen to our messages, what do they do? Undermine trust in our political system, in our democracy and in our government. That is a complete and abject failure on their part. She went on to say:

… get Chris Bowen in a blasted tanker and get him to drive it to those stations.

They have completely misunderstood the lessons from their time in COVID, when Scott Morrison went around talking about not holding a hose and the constituency in Australia punished him for that. It's not that they want you to actually hold a hose. They want you to show leadership and be in the country, not in Hawaii. That's the message they were trying to send you. They don't actually want Chris Bowen to go around driving a tanker. That is ridiculous. They didn't want Scott Morrison to hold a hose. They wanted him to show leadership. Chris Bowen is showing leadership. He's in this country. He's standing up and showing leadership every day by getting more fuel supply into this country.

Those opposite have been alarmists. They have been breeding mistrust in the community, and they have been causing people to panic buy and stockpile. It's little wonder that they cannot find leadership. Whilst they all have 'leader' in their titles, it's not about having 'leader' in your title; it's about showing up, the actions that you choose to take and the things that you choose to say. I could very well come up here and talk about the failure of the previous coalition government. I could talk about the fact that they didn't keep fuel reserves onshore—that they kept them in Texas. I could talk about their failure to incentivise Australians to electrify faster. I could talk about the fact that they let four of the six oil refineries leave our shores. But that would be petty. That would be politicising the issue. I'm not about pointscoring. I'm all about leading.

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