Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator McGrath, I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Labor Government to take responsibility for Australia's fuel security issues and outline the actions being taken to ensure adequate fuel supplies instead of blaming others

Australians in regional Australia in particular—but also those serving our regional communities and our fishing communities—have been unable to access fuel. The government tell us that we have got plenty of fuel in the country. I'm not going to dispute that. They've made that point. They've put the numbers on the table. Not all of it's in the country, if my understanding from question time today is correct, because 20 per cent of it is still on the water, but they're assuring us that we have plenty of supply.

The question that I would ask is, 'Where is it?' because it's certainly not available for communities around the country. I've spoken to friends in the fishing community in South Australia and Queensland. They can't get access to fuel. If they can't get access to fuel, they can't go out and earn a living. We've heard of farmers in farming communities who are about to harvest their crops, and they can't access the fuel.

This motion calls for the government to actually take responsibility for the fuel security issues and outline the real actions that they're taking to deal with the issue. Now, it is a difficult issue and, as the ministers have said in question time and in public over the last couple of days, there are people who are buying up fuel. I will join them and everyone else in urging people to try and act responsibly and buy in a normal way. But there are things that the government can do, and we know those things are in place, because we put them in place. We legislated for particular actions to be taken, and we put in place the frameworks for the Australian community to understand what the actual supply is. The problem is that the government hasn't been using that toolkit. The information that provides details of what the current supply is hasn't been updated since December last year. The framework was put in place at a previous time of fuel shortage so that people could understand where the fuel supplies were and so that we could work with the petroleum companies, the refiners and all of those in the community to make sure that the distribution network was working as it should be.

I asked the minister today if he was aware of any circumstances where there was hoarding within the supply chain. He wouldn't or couldn't answer that question. He did admit that there were some bottlenecks, but the question that I would ask in response to that is: what is the government doing to deal with the bottlenecks? Yes, it's a difficult situation, but the government's role is to work with industry and coordinate the process so that supply can get to where it's needed, particularly to rural and regional Australia, where the shortfall in supply is actually driving another problem, which is price.

The government haven't put on the table any demonstration of what they're actually doing to facilitate the flow of all that fuel that they say we have. 'We've got plenty of fuel' is the line they run, and it's the public's fault for being concerned and wanting to buy it. But what are they doing? What are the government doing, using the toolkit that we know is in place, to inform the community about supplies? The website has not been updated since December last year, which is absurd. We had a roundtable, and all we do is talk about problems. But we're not talking about what the government are doing, using their toolkit, to make sure fuel is getting to where it needs to be. We've got all this fuel, but where is it, and how do we get it to where it needs to be? (Time expired)