Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

The government is finally doing something, and we are grateful for that. Adopting the coalition's policy is a good thing, so we will be supporting this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Fuel Excise Relief) Bill 2026. However, what is so starkly obvious again in this place, today and through this week in parliament, is that the government has no plan to deal with this crisis.

Let me read out a list quickly: Balingup, Esperance, Esperance again, Ningaloo, Geographe, Carnarvon, Walkaway, Fitzroy River, High Wycombe, Carnarvon, Maddington, Balcatta, Broome, Ningaloo, Exmouth, Mount Barker, Mount Barker again, Port Hedland, York, Geographe, Geographe again, Geraldton, Newman, Waterloo, Busselton, Ascot, Balga, Bentley, Broomehill, Canning Vale, Carlisle, Dayton, Forrestfield, Kaloorup, Gosnells, Maddington South, Middle Swan, Morley, Newman, Rous Head North Fremantle, Ridgewood, Southern River, Success, Wanneroo, Wattle Grove, Withers. They're the petrol stations in Western Australia either without diesel or without unleaded—and some of them are without any fuel at all. So, yes, it is welcome that we are going to see excise relief. It will help Australian families, and it's good that the Labor government has adopted our policy. However, we need to see a plan from this government for dealing with this crisis going forward.

I remind everybody that I first started getting calls about this issue from regional Western Australia in the first week of March. We came into this place and, day after day after day, when the coalition were raising questions of the government, we were told, 'Nothing to see here.' In fact, we were called right-wing crazies for suggesting there was a problem. Australians themselves were blamed for buying the fuel they needed to keep their businesses running. It was their fault. So a farmer getting fuel to commence seeding, a truckie getting fuel to keep driving his truck or the many tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands, millions—of Australians who rely on fuel to keep their businesses running were blamed for the fuel crisis. The government didn't look to itself.

Only after more than a week in this place with us raising questions did the government admit that there was a problem, admit there was a crisis, admit that something had to be done about it, and now it's taken many more weeks before we've got to the point of them doing anything about the problem that was clear to everyone at the beginning of this month. In fact, it should have been clear to the government. The government itself told diplomatic families to leave the Middle East—particularly in Israel and Beirut, but it also recommended departure from places like UAE—on 25 February. They should have seen that this was at least a high-likelihood risk. If they are saying to diplomatic families that it's too dangerous to stay in the Middle East then they were considering there to be a very high risk of conflict. And what happens to the price of oil whenever there is a conflict in the Middle East? I can tell you. Look back over history. Anybody who's looked back over history knows what happens to the price of oil and sometimes the availability.

Now we've had both of those things affect Australia. We still have serious issues in our distribution system, as revealed by that list of Western Australian petrol stations that have no petrol or diesel.