Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

Let's just deal with the facts for a second and then get to the politics. We have fuel reserves—minimum stockholding obligations—of petrol, 150 per cent of our requirements; jet fuel, 134 per cent; and diesel, 116 per cent. The approach from the previous government—when Mr Morrison, Mr Turnbull and Mr Taylor were all in charge of this—was that Australia's national fuel reserves were to be held in Texas. I can tell you that Australia's fuel reserves are held here, in transport infrastructure and storage infrastructure around the country.

When Mr Taylor was in charge of our energy strategy—I think he was described by a former Liberal prime minister as Australia's best qualified idiot. What did the village of Nimmitabel do to deserve Mr Taylor as Nimmitabel's inimitable hereditary peer, as the country's sole remaining bunyip aristocrat. He was so lazy in his administration of the energy portfolio that he put our national stocks, he hoped, in Texas.