Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition will be supporting the suspension and the substantive motion because we believe that every lever should be available and used by this government, by National Cabinet and by state and territory governments to assist Australians with this fuel crisis.

For those listening at home, I will read the motion to the chamber. It says that we note the ongoing fuel security crisis as a result of the conflict in the Middle East is seeing volatility in global energy markets and that the significant cost-of-living pressures faced by Australian households are on top of the cost-of-living crisis created by Jim Chalmers and his ministers—prolific spenders that they are—that has seen the highest proportion of government spending across our economy in 40 years. The Reserve Bank governor made very clear last week that this was her prime focus when putting up interest rates for mortgage holders. The federal government needs to cut the spending at the upcoming budget.

This global energy crisis will see transport costs increase across our economy. We've seen our trucking industry concerned with how they will actually distribute goods across the country, from fresh food products to online postage. We've seen Australia Post put up their transport costs, as well. We need to build national fuel resilience, and we need to make sure fuel gets to where it's needed. Currently, it is a capital-F fail from the Labor government on ensuring that fuel is where it's needed.

Because Minister Bowen cannot do his day job—that has been evident over the last three weeks—they've convened National Cabinet, and now there is a blame game going on between state, territory and federal governments about who and how we are going to support Australians and our industries through this global crisis. It is absolutely the purview of state and territory governments to deal with public transport and active transport projects. It is not the job of the federal government to be examining whether or not to provide free public transport or whether or not to invest in active transport options. This is wholly and solely the purview of the state and territory governments. We do call on the federal government to work with state and territory governments around how to support households in this matter.

I would also call on the federal government to work with states and territories on a whole raft of issues, whether it's how to get data about where blockages are in the supply chain; whether it is about following Queensland and New South Wales with the ethanol mandates that they currently have and are not upholding; whether other states should also increase the amount of ethanol in their fuel supply; whether they should look at rationing, because we know that informal rationing is already occurring across the supply chain; whether states should actually take up—