Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. I refer to the fact that around 500 service stations have now run dry. This morning, Premier Chris Minns said, 'There was a willingness from the states to say to the Commonwealth, look, we need to make sure that, if there's going to be demand management measures that are put in place, they need to be done on a national level.' When will the minister take action to ensure fuel gets to where it's needed?

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

I thank the honourable member for the question, and I thank her for accurately quoting the Premier of New South Wales, which is a big step forward on yesterday—a big step forwards—after the member for Lindsay completely misquoted and misrepresented the Premier of New South Wales. She just dropped the word 'if', which does rather a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

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

The minister will pause. The member for Lindsay?

Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On relevance, this isn't the first time that the minister has done this personally towards me, and it is not about the opposition.

Honourable members interjecting—

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

No, I'll take action on this. I warned everyone before. Minister, resume your seat. I was crystal clear, and I said to everyone, 'This is how things will go.' You simply can't attend the dispatch box to say you don't like what the minister is saying. We would be here all day if that happened.

Well, that would be the case if everyone could say they objected to whatever someone's saying. So you will leave the chamber under standing order 94(a) for abuse of standing orders. You didn't state the point of order. To simply say that the minister has done this numerous times is an abuse of the standing orders. Simply state the point of order on relevance, as the Manager of Opposition Business does, and then we will deal with it—do not say anything else. We're simply not going to have people taking points of order because they don't like what the minister is saying. We cannot have that. No Speaker has tolerated that, and I won't either.

The member for Lindsay then left the chamber.

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

The honourable member referred to the statements of the Premier about the willingness to act in coordination, which is exactly what this Prime Minister is doing by convening a National Cabinet with said premiers and what I am doing by convening meetings with said energy ministers. That's what coordination means—coordinating the action we have taken and coordinating further action together. That is exactly what we are doing. It is exactly what we have done. I'll say it again: if those opposite want to engage in a little bit of patriotism for a change, instead of partisanship, they can make just one constructive suggestion—for the first time.