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

I rise to make my contribution to the motion to take note of answers given by government senators and ministers today to questions from the coalition in question time. I have to say that the last presentation and the presentations by ministers today are the reason that Australians don't have confidence in the government's handling of the fuel situation. Senator Dolega just quoted a fuel price of about $2.50 in Tasmania at the moment when, in fact, right now, looking at the fuel app, it's $3.15 in Ulverstone. It is absurd when Labor senators come in here and talk about what's going on in their communities right now and they're that far out.

That goes to the point that I would like to make with respect to the information the minister provided today. When he was asked about which fuel stations don't have fuel and how many there are, he was quoting data from 3 March, 10 March and 17 March. The latest information the minister came into the chamber with today was a week old. Even in the other place yesterday, Minister Bowen had information that was up to date. Yet the minister in this chamber comes in and responds to questions from the opposition, based on questions that we're getting from our constituents, with information that is a week old.

This is symptomatic of the way that this government has operated all the way through this crisis. For two weeks, there wasn't a crisis, there wasn't a problem and there was plenty of fuel. They quoted the volumes of diesel, unleaded fuel and aircraft fuel that were available in the country. They quoted all those numbers. They couldn't tell us where it was and they certainly couldn't tell us what was going on within the supply chains, which were clearly having problems. In regional New South Wales, regional Queensland and Western Australia, there were supply chains that were just drying up.

The fishing sector told us that they had no access to fuel. The only fuel, in some circumstances, was the fuel that they had left in their boats when they came back to shore. And the government couldn't tell us what was going wrong or why. Then, all of a sudden, at the end of the last sitting week, it was: 'Yes, there is a crisis. We'll have a roundtable. We'll put a tsar in place.' But they still can't give us up-to-date data. They should be able to give us up-to-date data, and we know they should be able to give us up-to-date data because, when we were in government, we put in place the systems that would provide it. So why can't the government do that?

They just want to deflect. They want to blame someone else; it was the consumers' fault for trying to buy too much fuel. If you have so little confidence in the way the government's handling the situation, of course you're going to make sure that your personal circumstances are looked after. Of course you're going to do that. Of course, then they try and blame the opposition, the then government from before the 2022 election, for the whole circumstance. Yet, during COVID, we learnt a lot about these supply chain issues and we put in place systems to ensure supply. We legislated for the reserve. We budgeted to build the supply capacity in Australia that the government's now relying on. Yes, we put the fuel reserves in the United States, but it was because there wasn't physical capacity to hold it in Australia. So we did the responsible thing. We secured the reserves we needed until we could build the supply here in the country, which is what we established the process to do. It was the responsible thing.

Then, today, we come to the situation with respect to urea, and what do we get? We get the same answers: 'There's plenty of urea. There's no shortage of stocks.' Does anybody understand why the farming community would not be confident in the answers that the government has been giving us when it's reading off almost exactly the same talking points that we got during question time in the last sitting fortnight—plenty of fuel, no shortage, and availability for the foreseeable future—and, of course, by the end of the sitting week, there was a crisis? The government needs to do better. It needs to be providing up-to-date information to the Australian community so that they can have confidence that the fuel they need is there for them. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.