Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We should not be this dependent on foreign fossil fuels. And we are in this situation after our prime minister was the first world leader to back in this illegal strike, which has now sent the economy into chaos. And it's a bit baffling to hear various members of the government describe the fuel price shocks as 'unexpected' or 'unforeseen'. Welcome to the realisation! Maybe you should have thought about that before you backed in this war straight out of the blocks.

The other thing that this government should be doing is getting on the phone to President Trump and saying: 'End this nonsense now. We will not back you any further.' And then they should bring our troops home, bring our personnel home and bring our military equipment home. However, what we're dealing with is a rushed proposal to give some much-needed—albeit short-term—cost-of-living relief to people for the fuel price shocks that they are experiencing. The Greens won't stand in the way of cost-of-living relief. We were in a cost-of-living crisis before this illegal war sent fuel prices sky high. That relief is needed all the more now, so we will be supporting this.

But what were you doing for the last four years, and why did you not learn the lessons out of Ukraine? Where is our energy independence—where is our renewable energy independence? We have some of the best renewable resources in the world. You want fuel security? And you want the sun and wind—they don't go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is how we have reliable, affordable energy supplies. And it doesn't matter what brain fart Donald Trump has, and what fresh illegal war he wants to drag Australia into, next week or in a few months. If we have those alternative sustainable liquid fuels and that renewable energy independence, then we can have lower prices and tackle the climate crisis. There are no losers out of that except the greedy gas corporations who are making bank off this war.

We've proposed a 25 per cent tax, at a minimum, on those gas exports to fund actual cost-of-living relief, including things like making public transport free in what is a deep fuel crisis. I was very disappointed to see that National Cabinet, on Monday, didn't address making public transport free right across the country. I give credit to Victoria and Tasmania for doing it off their own bat.

The Prime Minister should have said: 'We got you into this mess. We backed in this war. We will fund making public transport free for all you states and territories so people can keep their costs down and we can send fuel to the regions where it's needed.' But he did not do that. Halving the fuel excise is going to give people some short-term relief, but I'm very worried that it's going to put further pressure on supply, and I think it's going to be eaten up within another week or two of price rises. What we actually need is that investment in long-term energy security, and the cheapest, most reliable and most sustainable sources of fuel are our renewable energy deposits and sustainable liquid alternative fuels.

The other thing that the government has unfortunately neglected to deal with is the fact that they're not obliged to pass this fuel price reduction on to motorists. There is no rule that says that the petrol stations can't keep this and can't price gouge off consumers like they started to do the moment the war began. There is no rule to stop them doing that, because this parliament voted against the Greens amendment to give them that power to stop price gouging—twice, in fact, in the last month. It's all well and good to give the ACCC more powers to stop petrol stations from lying to people, but how about actually stopping them from price gouging people in the first place?

Again, we will be supporting this as a short-term cost-of-living relief measure, but this is a bandaid, and this is a situation that the government should have foreseen. They should get our troops out of that conflict. We should be a force for peace in the world. We should not just sign up to be Donald Trump's lapdog. We should invest in actual renewable energy independence and our fuel security and independence by investing in our renewables. Electrification is the way to go. We can do that for our trucks. We can do that for our passenger vehicles. We can actually have affordable, cheap, clean energy and protect ourselves from future price shocks.