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

Given the alacrity and urgency with which the government has introduced this legislation into the chamber and given the lack of review, scrutiny and debate that have been provided for it, you would think that this legislation would be about addressing the national fuel crisis. But will this legislation lower the price of fuel across Australia? No. Will it improve transparency around supply? No. Will it unblock bottlenecks and improve coordination with the states and territories? No. Will it improve Australia's refining capacity? No. Is it going to increase our stockpiles? No. All this bill does is give the minister greater power and introduce more regulations into our industrial relations system. There are elements of it that are worthy of consideration, debate and, potentially, approval, but it's a complete misallocation of priorities and resources to introduce a measure like this. The bill is basically designed to give the government what it's always wanted—a greater power for ministers to intervene in industrial relations—and to use as justification the fuel crisis, something which this measure alone will do very little to address.

The Labor government has dithered, procrastinated and delayed for four years now when it comes to fuel security. Instead of ensuring Australians can access fuel when they need it, the government spent the last three weeks blaming Australians for trying to access fuel. It said people were contributing to the crisis and accused them of being un-Australian for taking prudential measures to safeguard their own business or their own household, instead of levelling with the Australian public about the challenging fuel outlook we face, being transparent about where the shortages and bottlenecks are and harnessing all the powers of the federal government—including the convening power to bring together state and territory premiers, industry, business and road users—to coordinate the best response to this crisis.

What's striking about this response is that, when he was the Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister, the member for Grayndler, said he understood the importance of this issue. I remember in 2020, I think, he posted on social media about the price of fuel, which was then about $1.80, saying, 'Has Scott Morrison'—who was then the Prime Minister—'even checked the price of fuel lately?' The price is now about 50 per cent higher than that. In 2018 the then opposition leader and now prime minister said, 'Fuel security is critical to our national interest, and the current government is asleep at the wheel.'

I would put to you that, over the past four years, the current government has been asleep at the wheel. Since they came to office, we haven't seen any more refineries built in Australia, we haven't seen Australia's level of fuel reserves materially increase and we haven't seen any greater compliance with our international obligations, under the International Energy Agency, and now the government is being forced to play catch-up. That's okay—we will support them in playing catch-up, but the measures need to be directed at alleviating what we're dealing with today.

As I said, we're dealing today with higher prices. This bill will not address that. We're dealing with a shortage of available supplies. This bill will not address that. We are dealing with a lack of refining capacity and are hostage to international supply chains. Again, this bill will not address that. There are now 880 petrol stations reporting fuel outages nationwide: 340 in my own state of New South Wales, 178 in Queensland, 163 in Victoria, 110 in South Australia and others across Tasmania, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. In New South Wales the average price of diesel is 307c per litre. And E10—what many motorists put in their passenger vehicle—is at 248.5c per litre.

This is hitting households and is also hitting small businesses, tradies, truckies, freight operators and families—anyone who is reliant upon transport to get around. And it's not only affecting them at the bowser but increasingly will be affecting them in terms of the price they pay for goods on the supermarket shelf, because the cost of transportation, the cost of energy, is embedded in absolutely everything we consume.

The coalition has been clear. Unlike this bill, what we are proposing is to offer immediate and practical relief by, firstly, halving the fuel excise for three months and, secondly, reducing the heavy vehicle road user charge. Halving the fuel excise for three months would immediately cut 26c per litre off the price people are paying for fuel, delivering immediate cost-of-living relief. This is designed to be temporary and targeted and to ease pressure on households and small businesses.

We have also identified savings that will pay for this. But I would point out that the government's own electricity rebate scheme, in its several iterations, cost the budget $6 billion all up, in about three or four different phases. At that point the government recognised that spiking wholesale energy prices merited relief for households that were dealing with the inflationary consequences of that. Well, today we have spiking petrol and diesel prices, and surely the case is as strong to provide households with immediate cost-of-living relief for that.

When the coalition was in government we passed the Fuel Security Act, we introduced what's called a minimum stockholding obligation, and we rescued the last two refineries that were threatening to go out of business in Australia. Importantly, we put in place the legislative, policy and legal framework to allow subsequent governments to improve our fuel security. We had the mechanisms in place to incentivise the maintenance as well as the growth of refining capacity. We had the mechanism in place for the minister to change the minimum stockholding obligation.

All these powers existed when this government came into office. And, since this government has come into office, the international outlook has deteriorated dramatically. That's just an objective observation. Since this government came to office, we have had a war in Europe involving major powers—Russia and Ukraine as well as European Union powers and the United States. That war is now in its fifth year. We have had a war in the Middle East, again involving major powers. Its currently iteration—Israel, the United States, and Iran, but there have been multiple phases in this conflict—has been going for 2½ years.

You would think that if you wound back the clock five years you would realise that the security environment today is different to what it was five years ago, and our ability to rely upon international supply chains, freedom of navigation and commerce on the high seas, sea lanes of communication—everything that has underpinned Australia as a modern, open trading global economy—has changed dramatically in the past four years. But the government has not changed any of the policies or any of the settings to adjust and allow for that more risky environment. If we put in place four years ago the Fuel Security Act minimum stockholding obligation and the policy levers to support refining capacity, then, in the four years since this government came to office, you would have thought that, with everything that's happened internationally, they would have built upon those mechanisms. But instead they have done nothing. They've been completely idle these past four years and now they are dealing with the consequences of that.

Even four weeks ago, before this current conflict broke out, the government had nothing to say to warn Australians about this. This conflict between the United States and Iran was eminently foreseeable. The United States had issued public deadlines. They had moved two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region. They had engaged in a diplomatic process with some clear time limitations put on that. But, in the week before this crisis broke, you didn't once have the Prime Minister front the media, hold a press conference, warn the Australian public—never mind the motoring Australian public—about the risks of this conflict. We saw no steps from the government to improve fuel security in advance of this crisis. We saw no attempts to warn the travelling Australian public by changing the level of our travel advice. We didn't see the Foreign minister stand up. We didn't see the defence minister stand up. This sort of indolence that they displayed before this current war broke out has been mirrored right across their past four years in government, when they have done nothing to improve refining capacity, nothing to grow the minimum stockholding obligation, nothing to increase the stockpiles Australia holds, nothing to build redundancy and complementarity into our supply chains.

On this legislation in particular, let's be clear here. It doesn't introduce a new framework. The so-called 'road transport contractual chain order framework' already exists in law. All this particular piece of legislation does is allow the minister to look at applications under that framework, determine that they are emergency applications and expedite their consideration. I think that, in the circumstances we face, that is something worthwhile. I think that is positive. But I think we need to be clear that this will not lower the price of fuel or diesel or petrol for anyone. It will not provide one more litre than already exists here in Australia. It's not going to improve our capacity to meet our own fuel security needs. All it will do—and this is worthy—is provide some relief to people who are locked into contracts where the rapid increase in the price of fuel makes their continued operation unviable.

But, if this is a temporary emergency—and it is—then why are the powers that we're being asked to provide the minister under this act permanent? We are talking about a temporary relief measure to address a temporary crisis, but we are enshrining via legislation a permanent power for the minister to determine that an emergency application exists in any future scenario. If this is a temporary crisis, why is there no sunset provision to this legislation? Why will this power be given to the minister in perpetuity? If this is a temporary crisis, why is there no review mechanism built into this legislation? These are all good public policy features of legislation that everyone in this chamber is familiar with—sunset provisions for situations where the emergency is likely to pass and automatic reviews of legislation within a year, two years or a specified timeframe to see if it's working as it should. But this bill does not contain any of those protections. There's no automatic review. There's no sunset provision. I'm not even sure if the instrument that the minister uses to determine that an emergency application exists is a disallowable instrument. To be honest, I haven't had the time to look at the legislation closely enough to see if that's the case.

But I don't think that withstands scrutiny. This is a power grab. This is about giving a minister greater unfettered authority, and I don't think the business case has been made for that. As I said, this is addressing a second- or third-order issue of the crisis we're in, not a first-order issue. It is providing the minister a broad discretion that doesn't currently exist, but the framework to address this policy problem—the road transport contractual chain order mechanism—does exist, and we're being asked to grant these powers without the normal scrutinies and processes of legislative review and deliberation that the Senate is designed and empowered to conduct.

Now, if you could tell me that this legislation, if passed today by us and given assent this week, would immediately bring down prices, would immediately improve supply, would immediately improve the cost of living for Australia and would immediately provide security to manufacturers and transport, then I would be prepared to look past some of these concerns, but not even the most fervent supporters of this bill can pretend it does any of these things. The most they can say is it will have an impact on the margins in alleviating some of the pain associated with this crisis. As I said, that is not an unworthy goal, but the mechanisms we're being asked to support are disproportionate to the benefits that this legislation is intended to achieve. For those reasons, we will be moving amendments—I expect the coalition will be moving amendments—to this bill and we will continue to scrutinise this government's response to an ongoing energy crisis.