Basem Abdo (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. What steps has the Albanese Labor government taken to improve Australia's fuel security and sovereign capability? Why did the failures of the past make this work essential?

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Calwell for his question and congratulate him on the role he's been playing since his election last year. As the situation in the Middle East continues to deteriorate, Australians can be reassured that we enter this crisis well prepared. We have 1½ billion litres of petrol and three billion litres of diesel in our national stockpile, held in Geelong and in Lytton, which is a stockpile that was brought into force by law in 2023 as one of the first acts of this government.

It is the case that we hold that stockpile of petrol and diesel in our two refineries. We would be better prepared if we had six refineries. When Labor lost office in 2013, there were six refineries operating in Australia; when we came back to office in 2022, there were just two refineries operating in Australia. When the Altona refinery was shut in 2020, the member for Hume said, 'This will not negatively impact Australian fuel stockholdings.' Well, it's fair to say the closure of Altona and the closure of Kwinana and the others didn't help.

In relation to urea, I'm also pleased to advise Australia's truckies that we have a stockpile of five weeks worth of technical grade urea, which adds to 12 weeks of privately held supplies, which means that we have very good supplies and backups for urea. Yet again, the reason that stockpile is necessary is that we saw the closure of Australia's only urea manufacturer, on Gibson Island, announced in 2021. Senator Canavan was out this morning—as you know, I'm always looking for bipartisanship—and he said: 'We used to produce urea in Australia. It's another sad story.' Well, he's right. We did produce urea in Australia and it is a sad story that urea manufacturing closed while the member for Hume was the minister for energy.

But I have good news. Urea manufacturing is coming back under the Albanese Labor government. Perdaman, in Karratha, is seeing 2½ thousand construction workers, as we speak, making a manufacturing facility which will produce 2.3 million tonnes of urea. I congratulate the Minister for Resources for the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, which has helped construct and fund this facility.

I was unaware that the member for Maranoa was working with the Minister for Resources to support this program—claiming credit for construction work underway in 2026. Sovereign capability is not about an Instagram video next to old cars. It is not about spreading misinformation about net zero. Building sovereign capability is hard work, working with industry, and that's what the Albanese government is doing, correcting the deindustrialisation of the last 10 years.