Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let us be honest about it. The predominant reason for high petrol prices is the high cost of world crude oil prices. Over the last seven years, world oil prices have risen by 400 per cent from roughly $15 a barrel to $75 a barrel. We hear interjections, hyperbole and rhetoric from the other side. If they think they can do anything at all to bring down world crude oil prices, let us hear it. What will they do to reduce world demand for oil? What will they do to stimulate world production of oil? What would Labor have done to stop world prices rising 400 per cent from $15 a barrel to $75 a barrel? What would they have done? Can they pretend they would have done anything about world oil prices? The reality is—and Labor knows it—that by far the predominant factor driving petroleum prices is rising world oil prices driven by the rapidly increasing demand from the industrialisation of China and India in particular, and driven by the simple fact that supplies are limited.

See this speech in context