Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Prime Minister's plan to purchase fuel reserves for Australia and keep them in Texas. Isn't this like living in Sydney and keeping a spare key in Dallas?

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We on this side of the House know that a strong recovery from the COVID-19 crisis means having a reliable, affordable supply of fuel, gas and electricity. I will remind the House that, during this pandemic, our supply has remained stable. Our liquid fuel supplies have remained strong and have remained stable. We do need to take action to ensure that we have a strategic fuel reserve in this country, to ensure that the truckies, the tradies, the farmers and the commuters have access to the fuel that they need. We have a total fuel supply in this country of around 85 days—and we need it to be higher.

We have taken the opportunity of record low prices for liquid fuels to purchase $94 million worth of stocks to ensure that we have the liquid fuel security we need to keep this country strong. Because there is almost no storage left in the world, the right place to store it, for now, is the United States, but we are committed to ensuring that there is local storage available in Australia to make sure that those truckies, those tradies, those farmers and those manufacturers have the supplies they need. It is also crucial that we have a strong refining sector in this country to support our fuel security, and we're working closely with our fuel refineries at a difficult time for them. We're working closely, as well, with the unions at a difficult time to ensure that we have those fuel stocks we need in Australia.

It might be of interest to the House to know that back in 2012, when the Leader of the Opposition was the transport minister, Australia held only 17 days of petrol, 15 days of diesel and 16 days of jet fuel. In fact, we became non-compliant with our international obligations back in 2012, when those opposite were in government. We are absolutely committed to fuel security in this country and to having control of our own destiny, and we are fixing the problems created by those opposite.