Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

To put it mildly, we have a Minister for Climate Change and Energy that is gaslighting the Australian community. Minister Bowen goes out in the media to talk about our country's liquid fuel situation, particularly diesel, and says 'nothing to see here'. This is because we have an energy minister that has an ideological policy, not a practical policy. How can you say that there is nothing to see here when I have spoken to earthmoving companies in Western Australia who have no guarantee of fuel supplies coming their way and their distributor, a small distributor in Western Australia, is told they have zero allocation at the import fuel terminal? I've got a potato farmer in the south-west of Western Australia who has got a week of fuel on farm but is being told he will not get deliveries of new fuel for three weeks,

There is a gap there. Minister Bowen cannot just keep saying 'nothing to see here'. The fact is that there are real issues that are hurting real people on the ground. We've seen these reports right across Australia—in regional Western Australia, my home state; in Queensland; and in other states—that fuel supplies are at best highly uncertain and where deliveries are at best coming at an unknown point in time. I have talked to farmers who have prepurchased fuel and have now been told, 'That fuel is simply not available.' If there is nothing to see here, how is that possibly the case? We need a government, a Liberal government, that's focused on restoring Australia's standard of living and making sure that the economy can function as it should. (Time expired)