Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Frankly, it beggars belief that in 2017, in a country as clever as Australia, we still do not have what I would call a genuine comprehensive energy policy. Frankly, it beggars belief that, at a time when members of parliament are tripping over each other to come in here and talk about national security, we would not have a plan for our national energy security. Yes, in recent times—and here again today—there has been discussion about electricity and about gas. But the truth is we are only having discussions about these forms of energy as a knee-jerk reaction to a crisis. The only reason we are talking about electricity, and the only reason Dr Finkel did his review, is the blackouts in South Australia. It is not some visionary politicians thinking some time ago that we need to address this issue. The pathway that has come out of those blackouts is entirely unacceptable. This government, supported by the opposition, really should be talking about putting this country on a pathway to 100 per cent renewable energy and net zero carbon emissions.

It is the same with gas—again, a knee-jerk reaction to the predictions of gas shortages and of big spikes in the price of gas because we are exporting so much of our gas overseas. We are not having a conversation about gas because of visionary politicians years ago seeing a problem in the future and seeing that we needed to put a plan in place to avert it—it is a knee-jerk reaction. And, again, it is putting us on the wrong pathway. It is not good enough for the Prime Minister to call in a couple of CEOs and have a cup of tea, and have a couple of photos and a headline in the newspaper the next day. What we should be doing is coming in here and discussing how we reserve enough gas for our country for the future. That is what we should be talking about. I do worry that this whole talk about gas is just a clever plan to open the country up to more fracking. What we should be doing is stopping the exporting of so much of our precious gas and keeping it for our own uses for as long as we think we are going to need it.

The trouble with the reactionary and fragmented approach to energy policy in this country is we are not even starting to talk about the one glaring gap, and that is oil. The fact is that this country is importing most of our oil needs. Eventually, that problem will go away as we move to a reliance on renewable energy and as we move down to that ultimate goal—hopefully sooner rather than later—of net zero carbon emissions. But for now, at least, we are needing to import a lot of oil. Do you think that we have visionary politicians talking about energy security in this space? No, not at all. Bizarrely, we are signatories to an International Energy Agency agreement that we will keep 90 days of our import requirements. The most recent figures that I can get a hold of show that we are holding 55 days of our import requirements. In fact, we are the only OECD country not meeting our IEA treaty requirement to be holding 90 days. Frankly, I find this just bizarre.

And what sort of holdings are we holding? This is going to horrify people who are listening to this short speech and to this short debate: we are holding 31 days of our national LPG requirement. We are holding 23 days of our petrol requirement. We are holding 21 days of our aviation turbine fuel requirement and 17 days of our diesel fuel requirement. My godfather, Deputy Speaker! At a time of unprecedented international instability, and when most of our imports come from Korea and Korean refineries, we are not even meeting the 90-day requirement of the treaty that we have signed up to with the International Energy Agency.

And what about pricing? I have made the point in this place before, and I will make it again: no government has yet taken any effective action against the oil companies to make sure that consumers can actually afford to buy the LPG and petrol for their cars. No state is being hammered more viciously in this space in this regard than my home state of Tasmania. It is simply not good enough. I commend the member for Indi for driving this project to have a crossbench MPI, and I thank the opposition for supporting us in this. What we need is a government to stand up and develop a comprehensive energy policy and a comprehensive plan for our energy security. We need to do it cooperatively and collegiately, and we need to do it as soon as possible.

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