Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Petroleum and Other Fuels Reporting Bill 2017. The statistics that this legislation will now make it mandatory to collect will also show that Australia now imports 91 per cents of its petroleum from foreign tankers. This is up from 60 per cent only back in the year 2000. In fact, Australia now relies on a single megarefinery in Singapore for over half of our unleaded petrol supply. Yet the government's recent energy white paper concludes that it is concerning that we are dependent on petroleum for virtually all of our transportation. Petrol, diesel and aviation fuel accounted for over 90 per cent of transport energy use in 2012-13.

I would like to note at this point a contribution made by the member for Canning from a neighbouring electorate on this very matter on 19 June, when he said:

… Australia is in a position of significant vulnerability. A couple of themes emerged. We are a resource-abundant nation. We are the world's ninth-largest energy producer. By the end of the decade, we will overtake Qatar as the greatest producer of liquefied natural gas. We are geographically isolated. … Despite the strategic advantages that we have in the abundance of energy supplies, we are heavily dependent on imports of refined petroleum products and oils to meet the demands of Australian consumers and, also, to carry out essential tasks, like maintaining a defence force, maintaining supply chains throughout the country and all those other essential parts of the economy that we take for granted.

Our capacity to produce enough fuel for our own domestic market should be a concern for each and every Australian and each and every Australian business. In the last decade we have seen many petroleum and chemical refineries close around Australia. In Victoria, we have the Altona and Geelong refineries producing 200,000 barrels a day, but in Western Australia, just to the west of my electorate, down in the electorate of Brand, we have the Kwinana refinery, which produces 138,000 barrels a day on its own, the largest refinery in the country. With the closures of the Clyde and Kurnell refineries in 2012 and 2014 in New South Wales, the closure of the Lonsdale refinery in 2003, and the closure of the Bulwer Island refinery in Queensland in 2015, transitioning to a bulk-holding facility, 15 per cent of our crude oil is produced in Australia, and the other 85 per cent we receive through imports. In 2012 we were refining 75 per cent of that oil, but in 2014 it was down to only 57 per cent.

Both the NRMA and the RACV have said we have as little as three weeks fuel supply in Australia. We are dangerously reliant on one refinery for our fuel supplies. In essence, we have adopted a 'She'll be right' approach, which might work perfectly well for many things in Australia, but it's not the right approach for fuel security. Relying on the historical performance of global oil and fuel markets to provide for us in all cases merely puts us at the mercy of foreign supply lines. As the members for Canning and Lilley have highlighted, this is now an issue of national security; it is not just about energy security.

Anyone who has dealt with the Australian gas market in recent times knows that it is one of the most opaque and least transparent markets in the country. No-one knows exactly how much gas is produced, who holds it, how much it is sold for and where it goes. This bill will take us one small step towards improving that transparency, and as such Labor is supportive of this bill. Rather than relying on the voluntary disclosure of information, this bill will require the gas companies to disclose information regarding gas supplies to the nation. This bill further highlights the concerns that this side of the chamber holds around fuel security and will ensure that production of accurate statistics is particularly important, as the government implements a planned return to compliance with Australia's obligation, as a member of the IEA, to hold fuel stocks equivalent to 90 days of the previous year's average daily net oil imports.

But no-one should be fooled into thinking that, when this bill becomes law, we will have a solution to the gas crisis that this government has let develop. None of this will address the immediately pressing issue of Australia's energy security crisis, which has seen wholesale gas prices in the Australian industry rise from $4 a gigajoule a few short years ago to up to $20 a gigajoule today. Labor has been warning about this crisis for years. In the four years of this government, it has done nothing. Labor acknowledged this crisis back in 2015, when we adopted a gas export national interest test at our national conference, with great support from Western Australia, which had already adopted its own domestic gas reservation policy, which has secured natural gas supplies for WA. During the 2016 election campaign, almost a year after we adopted our national interest test for gas exports, we announced the details behind how we would test to ensure that, under Labor, LNG exports won't come at the expense of domestic gas users, which is exactly what is happening now under the watch of this government.

What have they been up to in this time? Their whole strategy seems to be one of deny, then ignore, then ridicule. When we are faced with a crisis, they inevitably blame Labor. Can you believe it? This is the short version of the government's approach to managing our gas supply, but the result is job losses, industry closure, low wages, uncertainty for industry, higher power prices and less energy security. The gas crisis facing Australian industry is here and now, but the government's proposed export controls won't be implemented until next year, if ever. That is clearly not good enough both for business, who can't secure gas today, and for the workers who are wondering just how long they're going to be able to keep their jobs. The government's proposed controls barely mention price, and that is one of the key issues for industry. It is also clear that, even if there is a projected gas shortfall, the government could decide to do nothing.

Labor support a strong LNG industry and we support a strong domestic gas market. It shouldn't be beyond our abilities to have both. The Turnbull government, after ignoring a looming gas crisis for years—they have been in government for four years and have done nothing—still fail to adequately address this crisis to ensure that there are affordable gas supplies, or just any supply, for Australians. If we don't see real national leadership on this issue to resolve this crisis, which is here and now, we will see devastating impacts. It will impact on industry and it will impact on businesses with closures that will result in thousands of jobs being lost. There will be ever-increasing electricity prices—not to mention being unable to guarantee that electricity supply in the first place.

We need short-, medium- and long-term solutions—things like pipeline investment and more transparency, which this bill does aim to try to deliver, as well as more development. These are all important, but it will take years before they can deliver more gas into the market. We are now in a situation where solutions to get more gas into the domestic market are needed, but they are needed today as well as in several years time.

Gas is absolutely crucial. It is a crucial input into the production process for many industries around Australia—for chemicals, manufacturing and plastics—as well as for energy generation, which we talk about so often. People often forget just how much gas is a primary input into those products. We cannot let gas supply contract. We cannot have a situation where we run out of gas to supply our industries, where our industries are not able to get the gas that they need under the contracts that they already have because it's being shipped offshore against our own national interests.

Australia's new LNG export industry has tripled the demand for gas but not the supply. So some LNG operators are now drawing on the domestic supply of gas to meet their export obligations, which is creating a lack of supply in the Australian domestic market, as well as pushing up, to record prices, the cost of gas for Australian domestic customers. Those customers are, of course, you and me. But they are also our industry, which so critically relies on this gas. If this is not resolved soon, we are going to have a critical crunch.

It is on the government's watch that this has happened. They have been in government for four years, and they have fronted up and done pretty much nothing about it. They have done nothing. Under the Turnbull government, they have completely surrendered the field. It's like they walked in and talked about all these jobs and growth but didn't realise they were going to need to guarantee some gas supply to make sure we could get jobs and growth. The best we can get out of this government is them giving energy company execs a stern talking-to. It's a bit like the way they talk to bank CEOs and chairpeople. All they do is bring them into a room, sit them all down, get them in front of some cameras and then flog them with a wet piece of lettuce. The way the government approach this makes so much change! The government feel great that they're doing something, the executives walk out and continue to do exactly what they were doing before, and who is left? The Australian public are left. The Australian public, consumers, industry and workers are left going: 'That was great, Government. Thanks so much for making such a great effort to protect our industries, to protect our jobs and to protect our nation.' That is the approach this government have taken. They take it to banks and they take it to an energy crisis. What does it produce? It produces no benefit whatsoever. Thanks very much, Government, for doing absolutely nothing to protect energy security in this nation—but at least you got around to making sure we got some great statistics!

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