Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

The events of the past two years have shone a bright light on Australia's vulnerability. The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have exposed dangerous dependencies in our economy. Once-hypothetical weaknesses have become all too real as stressed supply chains continue to adversely impact Australian businesses and consumers. But as we manage from one crisis to the next, I fear that we have not addressed these vulnerabilities. We have treated symptoms as they have arisen, but the underlying causes remain largely unattended to. This is particularly true when it comes to Australia's fuel security.

Steady access to quality fuel is essential for Australia. The transport sector—the backbone of so much of our economy—sources 98 per cent of its energy from liquid fuels. Given its prerequisite for our economy to function—can we imagine an economy without our truckies and the fuel that they need to fill up their trucks?—the Australian government must ensure that we have secure access to quality fuel, yet our supply of fuel largely continues to be left vulnerable to disruption in global supply chains.

The last national energy security assessment was conducted back in 2011, meaning the coalition has not conducted an assessment since it was elected almost a decade ago. In that time, our fuel security has diminished. By 2018 we were importing over 90 per cent of our liquid fuels, in the form of either oil for our few remaining refineries to process or refined fuels processed by refineries in Asia. All of this imported fuel and oil comes to Australia on foreign-owned or foreign-controlled ships. Lower costs overseas and pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic have led to the impending closure of Australia's four remaining refineries in 2020. Faced with this crisis, the Australian government finally stepped up and stepped in with a rescue package in the form of subsidies, but it was all too little, too late. BP announced the closure of the Western Australian Kwinana Oil Refinery back in October 2020, and Victoria's ExxonMobil Altona Refinery announced its closure only a few months later.

With only two operational refineries left in Australia, we are exposed to supply chain disruptions. This is not some imagined threat; we are seeing this play out in Europe at the moment. Approximately 60 per cent of Europe's energy is provided by gas from Russia. It took Russia invading Ukraine for Germany to cancel the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with Russia, which would have further concentrated Europe's energy reliance on that state. Europe is now moving rapidly to address this issue, with the European Union pledging to cut its gas dependency on Russia by two-thirds this year and cutting it entirely by 2030.

With China rapidly expanding its own oil refinery capacity and naval presence in our region, and along vital sea routes connecting Australia to suppliers, we should learn the lessons from Europe before we are forced to learn from firsthand experience. In 2020, the Morrison government announced it would build a stockpile of crude oil that could be tapped in the event of a major disruption, but this stockpile is being stored in the United States, meaning that we could have difficulty accessing it if the sea lines are closed. We still do not have enough fuel on Australian soil to meet the International Energy Agency's 90-day stockpile commitment. Recent events show that we need to get serious about our sovereign capability to refine fuel and store it here in Australia. Prime Minister Morrison and the coalition have let our fuel security languish for almost a decade. As global tensions escalate, we must act with haste to ensure Australia has the infrastructure that we need locally to protect our prosperity.