Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There's nothing to see here; that's right. What we need is reassurance about the plan, and we need transparency. This is something that we have asked for time and time again, in question time and at every opportunity we have had. We need to know what's going on with this fuel crisis. We have memories of COVID—and I speak to the people in my electorate of McPherson, especially because we are a border community down the southern end of the Gold Coast—and the country went through a lot. The world went through a lot. We need some sort of reassurance from this government, from this prime minister, that the government is in control and that our lives are not going to be taken over by government again.

The Prime Minister has previously passed the buck to states and territories, and he sent out his minister for climate change and energy, who I think, somewhat unscripted, came out and said, 'This is a national crisis.' So we've seen mixed messages time and time again. Just about every day, in question time, the coalition has stood up and asked things that I think are relatively simple. We've asked about fuel stockholdings. We've asked about outages at petrol stations. We've asked about shipment delays and details. For a government that spends so much time talking about transparency, talking about integrity and talking about the importance of democracy, we're not getting any of those qualities from this so-called leadership. Australians deserve to know what is going on now.

The coalition is prepared to be constructive, and one of the things that members on this side of the House have said is that we are happy with the fact that the government has come to the table in relation to reducing the fuel excise. This is something that we have been calling out for. The Prime Minister and the minister seemed to just ignore it over the weekend, and then they came back this week and said, 'Yes—

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