Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Choice in Childcare and Early Learning) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

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

The Albanese Government's failure to ensure Australia's sovereign capability in the supply of fertiliser, placing Australian agriculture, the resources sector and national food security at serious risk.

Just weeks after the US-Israel strikes on Iran, the Albanese government has shown exactly how unprepared it is to deal with this global crisis. This is the reality: the US had been positioning various military assets off the coast of Iran for several weeks leading up to 28 February, yet what preparations were made? Everyone could see it. Everyone could see what was happening, but what preparations were made for a conflict and the potential impact that it might have on the Australian economy, in particular the supply of fuel and fertiliser? Evidently, very little.

This episode further underscores the lack of preparedness by this government in building resilience into Australia's sovereign capability. We learnt over the weekend, in my home state of Western Australia, of the two-month closure of Australia's largest ammonia plant in my home state there in WA. Ammonia is made from natural gas that comes from just across the road at the Karratha Gas Plant. Big pipes go across the road and feed into this very important plant. Out of this plant, ammonia is created. It takes a natural gas and converts it to ammonia and, further down the process, to ammonium nitrate, which is used in the mining industry. It's used to make big rocks little rocks. You blow it up, and then you load it on to the train and sell it overseas to the market that wants it. This is absolutely critical infrastructure.

Through no fault of anyone, there was a power failure at this particular site. They pressed the big red button which made it stop all of a sudden, and it's going to take two months for the repairs to be made and for the plant to be restarted. That means there is a two-month closure of this very important facility, this very important manufacturer of ammonia and ammonium nitrate. Ammonia is used as a precursor, as an ingredient, that goes into the producing of fertilisers, including urea. It's exported to other factories across Australia and indeed across the world. This plant's been closed, and it's going to be closed for two months—very unfortunate timing when you consider the Strait of Hormuz is also closed.

Then today in the Australian we read that Orica's Kooragang Island ammonia plant in New South Wales is also facing an outage. Two absolutely vital and critical facilities right at this time. Clearly it's an unusual circumstance that this has occurred right at this time, but it's a very unfortunate circumstance. It's really a double whammy when it comes to our sovereign resilience because we have now limited capacity to produce our own fertiliser and ammonium nitrate which is essential for the resources sector.

The shutdown of Yara Pilbara's plant shows and underlines a very serious problem that we have, which is our capacity to have sovereign manufacturing capability in this country. The fact is that we are so reliant on just a few facilities, and when a crisis comes, resilience is tested. Unfortunately, right now, Australia's resilience is seriously tested. Now, I'm not an alarmist—you know me, Acting Deputy President—but this is serious.

Unfortunately, as it is with fuel, we're not seeing the government step up. I asked a question during question time—well, I helped draft a question that Senator Kovacic asked—and it wasn't satisfactorily answered, frankly, because the minister didn't seem to grasp the seriousness of this issue. It is a serious problem that we've got such concentrated domestic facilities and that Australia doesn't have the capability to deal with our own needs, whether it be fuel or fertiliser and ammonium nitrate. The government needs to step up, and we need to create the right environment and policies to enable these production facilities to exist in this country. Unfortunately, under this government and their policies, it's hard to do. (Time expired)