Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on the Liquid Fuel Emergency Amendment Bill 2017 and to raise my concerns. I have to say that it does surprise me that there is bipartisan support for this when there should be some questions being asked around this bill. Having been a very practical person, I always take my role in this place and the defence and security of the Australian people very, very seriously, and I am not satisfied that Australia does have enough fuel in reserve.

I am also not satisfied that we have enough refiners, and I have noticed the significant wind-down of the refining capacity of this country for many, many years. As a grain farmer for a long time, 20 years, I know that there would be diesel shortages at times. A standard harvester now would use 1,000 litres of diesel a day, let alone the trucks on it. I remember at times ringing up to buy fuel by the semi-load, 30,000 litres at a time, and not being able to get it and being told that there would be rationing to get our grain harvest off. So I simply do not have comfort in the rhetoric that says Australia has over 50 days of fuel reserve. And I certainly don't have comfort in the ticketing mechanism as a way to deal with a significant global emergency. This appears to me like buying a boat with holes in it in case there's going to be a flood.

If there is one thing that we could learn from history it is that we don't learn from history. The lack of preparation from the House of Representatives in the 1930s for the conflict that took place in the 1940s is something I want to draw on as I bring out why my concerns exist with this mechanism as a way of dealing with our fuel reserves. On 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. On Christmas Day of that year, people who recently enlisted in the Australian Defence Force were combined with the 39th Battalion and rounded up two days later and put on a boat called the Aquitania. These 1,068 people were sent off to Papua New Guinea and they then went on to fight in Kokoda. But, on that boat, they didn't have enough guns for them. The House of Representatives, the government of Australia, had not prepared well enough make sure that we had enough guns for what actually turned out to be the defence of Australia.

To sit here in bipartisanship and support a bill that essentially says that we are having a ticketing mechanism that worked in Europe as the means for securing our fuel is not good enough. The ticketing mechanism was set up in Europe. Under the ticketing contract, a seller agrees to reserve, on behalf of a buyer, a predetermined amount of oil for the period of the contract in return for an agreed fee. During the contractual period, the buyer—in this case, Australia—generally has two options. The first is to purchase oil or part of the reserved oil stock with a price determined by a market based rate under the contract. The second option would be to release the stock back under the global oil market. That works in Europe when you have land borders, and that's where it was originally designed. If you have land borders you can literally truck fuel from one country, which is a small geographical area, to another country and ensure that everyone is meeting their obligations. I don't believe it works satisfactorily for a country that is an island.

We of course have chosen to put a lot of money into submarines, and submarines will become essential for keeping the laneways open for fuel to come into Australia. But I do note, even in the talking notes here, that in 2015-16 there is a boast here about how 30 per cent of Australia's oil never comes from more than one source. But the sources where we do get our oil—the 30 per cent—South Korea, Singapore, Japan, China and Malaysia and Taiwan—are all within the very same region that we are very nervous about a conflict at this point. So, when you start thinking it through, out of the list of countries that we source our oil from, there is only one that isn't in the region of a potential conflict zone, and that is India. So, we all stand here, in a bipartisan way, and say, 'We're meeting our obligations, because we've got tickets to access oil that we can turn into aviation fuel. We've got tickets to access diesel that we can run our tanks on, run our defence systems on, run or boats on, but it's all in the same region.' The tickets frankly may not be good enough for us. So, I guess my role in the parliament, which I take very seriously, is to raise at times a warning.

I also point out: we are a large geographical land mass with all our agricultural products in the regions and all our populations centred in three big cities—the population of Sydney is a bit over four million; the population of Melbourne is just under four million people; and the population of Brisbane is two million people. Our food is distributed on trucks running on diesel, and so we started to think this is not just an issue of our defence capabilities; it's also an issue of the ability to transport food to our populations that only hold very limited food reserves in those populations.

So, I do believe that, whilst ticketing perhaps ticks that box and saves the government a lot of money, we are skimping on our obligation to look after the security of the Australian people, and I think someone in this parliament needed to raise it. It astounds me that no-one on either side has raised it until now. So, in doing so, whilst I will vote in support of the legislation, I will be seeking a very strong commitment that both sides of the parliament will move towards increasing our oil refining capacity because of national security; that that oil refining capacity will be in different geographical locations, which limits the ability for them to be taken out in an air strike; and that we will be making a long-term commitment to move towards our 90-day obligation, which should be our obligation. This is simply, I believe, buying a boat with holes in it in case of a flood. This is maybe buying us time, but it is not addressing adequately the major risks that we have in our region. I want to put my resolve to that in this parliament and hope that other members of parliament also take their national security obligations as seriously as I do. Thank you.

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