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

I rise to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Bill 2026, in the very small amount of time allotted to this chamber, to debate a bill where we actually seek to increase the penalties available to the ACCC. But what I'd like to have seen, as we enter the fourth week of this fuel crisis, is the ACCC on the streets, checking up on local servos, knocking on the doors of the big four fuel suppliers and launching investigations into how the market was operating and whether gouging was occurring. Was there unconscionable behaviour when there were rumours of hedging and hoarding of fuel?

We're seeing a trucking industry now struggling with the biggest increase in fuel prices ever. Even at the height of the Ukraine war, fuel prices increased 40c a litre; we are now in excess of 80c to 90c a litre. That flows on through our entire economy. Australians are struggling, now, to pay for the fuel they need to get to work and to get their kids to and from schools. Industries are struggling to even get supplies of diesel and petrol to keep our agriculture industry going, and our mining industry—which pays the bills in this country—as well as our fishing industry and beyond.

As we've seen in reports today, as we head into the fourth week, there is no doubt there are flow-on impacts right across our economy. There are claims that this hit will be equivalent to three interest rate rises. So, for households already struggling with Jim Chalmers's and Anthony Albanese's cost-of-living crisis, this couldn't come at a worse time.

While state and federal governments play the blame game—'It's your problem; you take the lead;' 'No, it's your problem; you take the lead'—it's mums and dads lining up at suburban fuel stations or having to make the tough decisions about what they do or don't do or participate in. We're seeing absenteeism increase in the manufacturing, retail and construction workforces right now. That's what's happening outside of Canberra.

As the shadow transport minister, I've been in conversations, since day one, with our trucking industry, who've called for this to be declared a national disaster because truckies are going broke. They were going broke at a rate of two businesses a week before the crisis, and it has only gotten worse. They've asked the federal government for disaster recovery arrangements to be activated, to help small trucking businesses with cash grants, and concessional loans for those businesses with fewer than 20 employees, because they can't afford to pass the fuel increases on.

They've asked for the road user charge to be removed. Truckies are paying 32c a litre. The government could have removed that with a pen stroke and given immediate relief three weeks ago. It could allow higher productivity freight vehicles so you can move more kit to Coles and Woolworths, to shelves. We just need regulatory change. We need someone to sign a bit of paper. We can't get that done. NatRoad calls for cutting the road user charge. We need state-level owner-driver cost orders. The shipping industry needs the coastal trading act relaxed so that imports can move freight more efficiently. There are so many suggestions, including GST relief for our trucking industry—the tax on the tax. You could have done that on day 1. Instead, this government has taken four weeks to bring forward increasing the penalties of the ACCC. I've yet to see the ACCC prosecute anyone in the last four weeks. I don't know how many penalties they've actually handed out.

Do you know what the Prime Minister's big announcement is? It's that he's got a plan to bring premiers to Canberra, in four days time, to come up with a national plan on how to save our country. These guys are incompetent, and Australia deserves better. (Time expired)