Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I look forward to making my contribution to this debate taking note of answers. I want to say that I understand supply chains as well as anyone in this place, I can tell you. I just thought I'd throw that across to my learned friend over on the other side, Senator Colbeck, who's one of the good ones—like you, Mr Deputy President. But I do want to say this: there is a well-worn track here.

I'll go back—and I'm shooting from the hip, but I think it was about 2015—to when the Rural, Regional Affairs and Transport Committee conducted its first or second inquiry, and I'll be held to account on that, on Australia's future oil supplies. Mr Deputy President, you were a proud member of that magnificent committee, but I don't know whether you were on that inquiry, the first one or the second one. One was done when we on this side were in government—so, obviously prior to 2013. Then I did one as the chair of the references committee in opposition in 2015.

Back then, we had serious concerns about our fuel supplies. A lot of people in this building get bits and pieces. We understand there is a treaty—and I always forget the initials; it's the nuclear mob—that says we're supposed to have 90 days of fuel supply. This is going back to when we had—I will be corrected if I'm wrong—about eight refineries on our shores. We held the inquiry, we travelled through the states, and the message was simple: nobody knew how many days we had. Now, the evidence is all there. It's all written into the report—and I'm talking about the 2015 report, because that's the one I signed off on. No-one had a clue. We were told it was 40, then we were told it was 30, and I remember suggesting to the department at the time, 'Have another guess,' after which we said, 'Don't dig any deeper,' because no-one knew.

What the public needs to know is that when we were looking at how many days of fuel we had—and I'll throw this at you—the number of days they threw at us included, when we had eight refineries, fuel that was on land: 30 days, 40 days, whatever; they couldn't work it out. We thought, 'Okay; that's fair enough.' But then we dug a bit deeper. And this will shock a lot of Aussies: included in those 30 or 40 days or whatever the figure was that's there in the report was oil on its way on ships from Korea, Singapore or Japan or wherever the fuel was coming from. We thought, 'Well, that narrows it down a little bit.' But then came the hook, the third part of the evidence: it also included orders that had been put in but hadn't left Korea or—

Senator Scarr, you're shocked; you should have seen the shock on my face when we were at the parliament house in New South Wales having the inquiry. It also included orders that hadn't been filled.

So I just want to go back. The report that I wrote—three recommendations is all there were; I can't remember them word for word—was seriously saying to the government back then: 'You need to have a very serious look at what is happening on our shores when we have eight refineries.' And nothing happened. That was in 2015. I'm not passing the buck, but nothing happened. And I can talk as someone who does value fuel. I know that fuel is. For those who don't know, I'm from the trucking industry. I get fuel. I get our supply chains.

I will say one thing, as this is a real nerving issue for people out in the regions. And I'm not talking about the truck stops, where the truckies are telling me they're still getting their fuel; it's there every day. Their usage is regular all the time. I do acknowledge those little towns in regional Australia where there are one or two outlets and they run out of fuel. So I've asked my trucking mates, 'How has that happened?' when I have no doubt we have a lot more fuel on our shores now than what we had before. We now have a line of sight of the ships coming— (Time expired)