Name: House of Representatives Chamber (part 2 of 2)
Uploaded: 2026-03-30T04:50:00+00:00

00:00 - 00:34

Speaker 28

Should be actively hedging, stockpiling, and extending guarantees across international supply chains, the parliament's primary safe... Safeguard is a report that may well not land for three years or more. If something goes significantly wrong in year one, there will be no circuit breaker, no sunset clause. By the time the review arrives, the damage may already well be done. The concerns I have around this bill bring me back to my main point, the need for structural reforms and for some difficult conversations.

00:35 - 03:25

Speaker 31

We can't debate this legislation without saying the quiet part out loud. The real answer to Australia's energy security crisis is not stockpiles. It's not hedging arrangements. It's not a government agency buying and selling fuel for us on international markets. The real answer is reducing our dependence on international energy markets and improving our sovereign capacity to produce energy.

Every dollar that we spend securing fossil fuel reserves is a dollar that we do not spend accelerating the renewable transition that would make these conversations and this legislation unnecessary. A country that's able to generate its own clean energy at home will not be and cannot be held hostage by wars in The Middle East, by volatile and unsafe shipping routes, or by the pricing decisions of international fuel corporations. That is what Australia's genuine energy security future looks like, and this bill must not become a distraction from that goal or an excuse to delay it. For every dollar put forward to securing international fuel supply under this legislation, the government should reduce the fossil fuel subsidies received by major industries through the fuel tax credit scheme. While everyday motorists and small businesses are struggling with the cost of diesel, the government's fuel tax credit scheme is costing us $10,800,000,000 per year.

That's $300,000,000 a day or over $200,000 by the time I finish this speech. Fuel tax credits make diesel fuel use artificially cheap for off road uses, such as in mining. Fossil fuel companies themselves, like coal miners Glencore, Peabody, Yancoal, Mitsubishi, Whitehaven, and Anglo American, are significant, large, and ongoing beneficiaries from fuel tax credits. So we have the wicked paradox that Gina Reinhart's Hancock prospecting is receiving 52.6¢ per litre subsidy for its off road use of diesel, while truckies today are struggling to deliver groceries to our supermarkets and still, until the legislation passes, the house paying the heavy vehicle road user charge of 32.4¢ per litre. The full picture of this legislation is the government is proposing to use taxpayer money to secure more fuel supply, supply which will then flow to the same fossil fuel giants who are already receiving billions of Australian dollars in taxpayer subsidies.

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