Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Treasurer, one 10th of our entire export earnings, $62,000 million, boomerangs offshore to buy fuel. Since our question to the Prime Minister last week, truckies, tourism operators, farmers and families are now paying 25c a litre more at the bowser. Since 2005, we've repeatedly moved that 32 per cent of our fuel requirements be met from our own offshore oil reserves. This is without even tapping our oil shale. Brazil, America and Europe all have ethanol, whilst China and India have announced ethanol. Will the budget continue to say no to ethanol for another 30 years?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks to the honourable member for his question. For as long as I've known the member for Kennedy, or known of the member for Kennedy, he has had an interest in fuel security and particularly biofuels, so I want to acknowledge that at the outset.

I also want to assure him that we're not waiting for the next budget to take action on fuel security. The government's taken a number of important steps, including when it comes to our Cleaner Fuels Program, to address some of the issues that he raises in his question. Just today, as we've said in earlier answers, we've taken some additional important steps to address fuel security, particularly in regional areas. We do acknowledge that even though there is certainly enough fuel overall, there's pressure in some areas, so we're working closely with industry, the regulators and others to make sure that where there's pressure on supply chains, we're working as hard as we can to address them.

Just today, we're doubling the penalties for retailers doing the wrong thing and others doing the wrong thing. We've got the fuel price monitoring being ramped up for price spikes. We're working with industry to increase fuel supply to service stations, including—

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, a point of order. The question was: why aren't we using our own resources—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Resume your seat.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

to meet the problem? That's not the answer I'm getting.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Resume your seat, Member for Kennedy. You simply can't get up and say you don't like the answer. You've got to state the point of order.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What should be of particular interest to the member for Kennedy is that these three sets of initiatives that we're taking today are on top of a number of fuel security initiatives that we already have in place. For example—and this goes right to the member for Kennedy's question—on 17 September 2025 the energy minister and I, in Brisbane, announced the $1.1 billion Cleaner Fuels Program to kickstart low-carbon liquid fuel production in Australia, which is all about using our know-how here and our resources here to contribute to fuel security. The Cleaner Fuels Program is all about low-carbon liquid fuels, along some of the lines that the member for Kennedy has talked about before.

We've also got the domestic reserves through the minimum stockholding obligation that commenced in July 2023. We're maintaining our domestic refining capability through the fuel security services payment, which again goes directly to the member for Kennedy's question. Remember that we had six refineries at the start of the member for Hume's time as energy minister. We've now got two, but we've taken steps to secure our supply. We're reviewing the relevant legislation. We passed legislation in December to strengthen our response capabilities as well. So this government understands the pressures on fuel security. We've taken a number of steps, including trying to rebuild and build our own local supply capacity and manufacturing capacity when it comes to low-carbon liquid fuels. If other steps are required, obviously we'll consider them in the usual responsible way.