Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Today we heard some sobering figures from Senator Ayres, who came to the chamber prepared to level with the parliament and with the Australian public about the extent and severity of the fuel shortage in Australia. He confirmed that there are 164 petrol stations in New South Wales where you cannot buy diesel at the moment. He also said that eight per cent of petrol stations nationally have one or more grades unavailable. That means they might not have diesel, or they might not have unleaded. At my count, that's about 500 to 550 petrol stations across Australia that have one or more grades unavailable. If you look at the other figures, you'll see that in New South Wales 154 stations are out of diesel and 51 stations are out of petrol. In Victoria, 101 petrol stations are not selling petrol and 83 are not selling diesel. In Queensland, 32 petrol stations are out of petrol and 47 are out of diesel. By my count alone, there are about 260 petrol stations across New South Wales where you cannot buy diesel.

Just 12 days ago, on 12 March, the energy minister, Chris Bowen, had this to say. He said:

But we do need to have this conversation based on the facts. And the fact of the matter is we have enough diesel in Australia for our needs for the foreseeable future …

The energy minister, 12 days ago, told the Australian public there was no need to worry, 'no need to panic' because 'we have enough diesel in Australia for our needs for the foreseeable future'. Well, here we are, 12 days later, certainly still within the foreseeable future, and we have 164 petrol stations in New South Wales where you cannot buy diesel, 83 in Victoria, 47 in Queensland and eight per cent nationally.

This has all the makings of a national crisis. Those opposite like to accuse us of asking questions to sow panic, but what they have been engaged in is a form of denialism, a form of fiction, a form of gaslighting—telling people that there's no need to worry and that everything will be fine. But the lived experience of people, especially in rural and regional parts of our country, is that fuel is running short.

I also want to touch on the government's response to an answer to Senator Kovacic's question about urea imports. I think Australians all know and understand intrinsically that the crisis in the Gulf, the war in Iran and the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz are pushing up petrol prices in Australia. What they may not know, though, is that Australia is also highly dependent on the Middle East for imports of urea, which is then used as a precursor for fertiliser. In Australia we get about 65 per cent of our international imports of urea from the Gulf countries—Saudi, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar—and that supply is also significantly interrupted now. What we're seeing are not only higher petrol prices but, increasingly, higher fertiliser prices, which will feed into our supply chains.

If Australia and this government had our inflation under control, if they had government spending under control, we would have some ability to absorb this shock, this exogenous supply-side shock. But we don't. Last week, we had central banks meeting in Frankfurt, in London, in Washington, in Ottawa, in Tokyo. Central banks around the world decided to keep their interest rates on hold because they knew that this shock was coming and that it was going to have a one-off impact on inflation, but all of those countries had inflation back to their target band. In Australia, our inflation has been running at 3.8 per cent annually and is well outside the Reserve Bank's target band, which is why, when the Reserve Bank met last week, they had no choice but to raise interest rates, and it's why the Governor of the Reserve Bank said, when announcing that decision last week, 'inflation was already too high' in Australia before this shock hit.

Now, we have Treasurer Jim Chalmers trying to prepare Australians for inflation with at least a number four in front of it and quite possibly a five in front of it. That means that interest rates are going to have to go up again. That means the economy will slow. That means Australians will be paying more, not just for their fuel but for their food, for anything that comes by truck, for anything that's transported, for basically everything we consume, and it's because this government has run down our inflation credentials. (Time expired)