Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to congratulate the Albanese Labor government for taking another leaf out of One Nation's book and cutting the fuel excise. Of course it's taken a national fuel crisis to do it, and as usual Labor's cuts don't go far enough. It's an overdue response to a crisis that a couple of weeks ago Labor said did not exist. Just like Labor had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a royal commission in response to Bondi, Labor has been forced to act and implement One Nation's agenda, although our call was for a 100 per cent cut to the excise, not 50 per cent. Anthony Albanese's second term as Prime Minister is being defined as 'lurching from one crisis to the next'. They were crises of their own making. Antisemitism and fuel insecurity are problems for which Labor is to blame.

More problems are looming, not least the supply of fertiliser for our agricultural sector. Australian agriculture has always been dependent on high fertiliser inputs because of the nutrient deficient soils. It shows we need to revive our fertiliser manufacturing in Australia, so we never leave our farmers short of the essential input. We need to make sure this critical resource gets to our farmers in the most cost-efficient manner by utilising our rail freight networks in operation now. While successive governments have been obsessing over net zero and high immigration, they've forgotten the fundamentals. We can't eat wind turbines or solar panels. We need to eat food. We need farmers to produce food. We must use every measure to support our farmers.

Like I said, there's a lot more to be done over this crisis, but this is only the start. Surely we can learn from what happened this time around to better prepare ourselves. How about we actually utilise our resources—our oil and gas—more?