Topics: Fuel shortage, Iran war, Citizenship, NDIS

EDDIE WILLIAMS: New South Wales Liberal Senator Dave Sharma is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs and for International Development and the Indo-Pacific. He's also a previous Australian Ambassador to Israel, and he's visiting Bega today. Senator, good morning.

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DAVE SHARMA: Good morning, Eddie, great to join you.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: What impact do you expect this blockade is going to have on supply chains and fuel supply?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, look, to be honest, the Strait of Hormuz has obviously been blockaded already, but what's been happening is Iran has continued to export its oil throughout this crisis because it's waving its own ships through. And I think what this latest move does is make sure that Iran also pays a price for the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran exports about 2 million barrels of oil a day. And from what I understand, most of that oil has been getting through and actually being sold at a premium on international markets. So at the moment, Iran is a financial beneficiary of that blockage. I think what this will do is change that balance of incentives and disincentives.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: So does this do something to progress a resolution to the conflict?

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DAVE SHARMA: I think it does because, look, obviously we had— there were talks, diplomatic negotiations in Pakistan over the weekend. Those ended inconclusively. And often in a negotiation, it's about making sure you go and get some more leverage before you resume talks. And I think this is what the Trump administration is trying to do here. So, I don't think it means that the conflict is going to get worse, but it might set the help stage for a resolution of the conflict on better terms.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: How long could it take to see that resolution?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I don't have a crystal ball here, but I do expect it will happen in the next couple of weeks. I don't think the US administration wants this to go on much longer. I don't think Iran does. I don't think countries that rely upon Gulf energy supplies, including China, including Japan, including Korea, including Southeast Asia, including Australia, Israel, for that matter, want to see this go on for much longer.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: It is day 44 of the conflict. Do you see Israel, Australia, the rest of the world being any safer than they were before the conflict began?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think it's always— you can never really make a judgment about the outcome of a conflict whilst it's still going on. So I'm hesitant to reach for things too quickly. But I would say that over the last 4 to 5 decades, Iran, under the Islamic Republic of Iran since the revolution in 1979, has been a huge source of instability and a driver of conflict, not only in its neighbours and in the region, but across the world. I mean, we saw last year that Australia expelled, rightly, the Iranian ambassador, listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization because of their involvement in sponsoring and supporting terrorist acts on Australian soil. So what I think you've seen this conflict do so far is drastically degrade Iran's capabilities to export that sort of instability, their ballistic missile program, their nuclear enrichment program, their nuclear weapons program, but also their command of resources to support armed terrorist groups in the region, including Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen. So I would say that when this conflict is resolved, even if Iran still remains under the same government, which looks likely, their ability to do harm and their willingness is going to be drastically reduced. And that will make the world and Australia a safer place. Yeah.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: It's 10 to 9 on ABC South East. You're hearing from New South Wales Liberal Senator Dave Sharma, who's visiting Bega today. What's the purpose of your visit to the region?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I've been down to have a look at the availability of fuel supplies and see what that's doing to the local economy. I just stopped at a service station in Tathra on the way here, which was actually getting a delivery of fuel from Sydney. They said it was their first delivery in a couple of weeks, but they don't know when the next one's going to come. Their owner is trying to lock that in. I've heard stories of tradespeople that are basically putting their workers on leave because the cost of diesel to get to jobs has gone up too high. There's a lot of businesses obviously in the forestry sector, but also the fishing sector that are heavy users of fuel. So I'm really just wanting to see what's the local impact in terms of economic activity on the shortage of fuel and any steps the government has taken to reassure Australians about their supplies.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: What do you make of the new advertising campaign the government's launching?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I have to say, I think I agree with a lot of your listeners who have been texting in that it's a marketing distraction, that it's a spin campaign. I mean, what Australians would like to know is what is the government doing to ensure more fuel availability and supply, and what steps are they putting in place longer term to make sure that we are less vulnerable to global disruptions like this? But instead, we're getting a $20 million advertising campaign, which I think probably tells Australians a lot of what they know already. How to use less fuel and try to be economical. I think Australians are already doing that. They're perfectly sensible in that regard. What it would be helpful to have is What will the government do to improve fuel security and availability in the future?

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: The government, the Prime Minister's visit to Singapore and further visits to Asian partners this week, does that go some way to addressing that supply?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think they're helpful, but I don't think you can oversell them. And I think all these countries— Singapore was very clear last week that, yeah, of course we'll keep selling to Australia, but we're dependent on Middle Eastern crude supplies to produce refined products to sell to Australia. I think the bigger issue has really been the lack of stock holdings in Australia and the lack of refining capacity in Australia. And that's been a known issue now for at least 5 years since the COVID pandemic ended. And it was an issue that Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister campaigned on, saying that fuel stocks in Australia were insufficient. Now, they haven't gotten any better in the 4 years he's been in government. That's on him and his government.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: What are the steps that he should be taking to address that?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, look, As the coalition of which I'm a part, one of our last acts in government was to pass the Fuel Security Act, which provided mechanisms to basically improve refining capacity in Australia, rescue the last two refineries in Australia, but it also provided the structure to encourage more refineries to set up in Australia. And it also created what's called the minimum stockholding obligation, a mechanism the government used to mandate how much fuel is being held in Australia at any one time. None of those tools have been used by Anthony Albanese, that those mechanisms have not been used. And that's what we need to see. I think we need to see the government support proposals to increase stock holdings or reserves in Australia, but also to encourage more refining capacity. I mean, 25 years ago— and this is not that long ago— Australia was basically 90% self-sufficient on liquid fuels. We produced about 760,000 barrels of oil a day and our 6 refineries produced about 90% of Australians' needs. Today, we're 90% dependent on overseas supply chains. That's been a dramatic deterioration in the past 25 years.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: I understand you're meeting shortly with the Mayor of the Bega Valley. Obviously, the impacts of the fuel situation will be on the agenda. What else are you interested in hearing about from the region today?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I'm also very interested in hearing about housing, housing shortages, housing availability, because I've heard that rents are high, housing is unaffordable like it is across much of elsewhere in New South Wales. And I've particularly been hearing that the biodiversity credits and offsets that are needed to establish new housing are making a lot of projects basically unviable, commercially unviable. And I think that's something we need to look at, that if we're discouraging new housing because of biodiversity credits when we're effectively in a housing emergency, that's something that we need to reassess.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: The Nationals leader Matt Canavan has been talking about wanting to make it harder to become an Australian citizen. Is it too easy to become an Australian citizen now?

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DAVE SHARMA: I think there are steps we can take to ensure that the people who are being offered citizenship— and bear in mind, no one has a— unless you're born in Australia to Australian parents, no one has a right to citizenship. And it's an attractive prize. A lot of people want to come to Australia and move here and make their lives here. And that's a good thing. We want to be an attractive place. But we also want to make sure that the people who are making their life in Australia are committed to Australian values, the Australian way of life, and upholding our laws, our systems of government and everything else. And I think we can do more to basically raise the bar and improve the quality of our citizens. And I don't think— I don't know if the question is making it harder so much as making sure that we have better citizens who are better equipped to make a contribution to Australia and who are better placed to support Australian values.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: An issue you no doubt hear a lot about around the state is the NDIS, discussion about how to shore up the future of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the upcoming budget. There is the new Thriving Kids Scheme on the horizon. What is the Coalition's perspective? What is it going to take to ensure that the future of this scheme in the long term?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, I think the, the key to the future of the scheme is its financial sustainability. Now, the NDIS at the moment costs every Australian about $2,000 per year, right? It's about a $50 billion program. So that's every Australian taxpayer or not, child or worker or not, is paying $2,000. That's more than Medicare costs and Medicare benefits. Every Australian in the NDIS is about 600,000 Australians. Costs more than the defence budget, costs more than aged care. Costs more than the federal government spends on education. That is unsustainable. I mean, we cannot have a program like that. So I think we need to improve the— tighten eligibility criteria, push people off onto other schemes that might be better placed to support them, that cost less, like Thriving Kids. I'm a supporter of the Thriving Kids initiative. But also, frankly, there is a lot of evidence, and people would have heard this, of people gaming the system, either suppliers or consumers, people, suppliers being set up to pocket as much money of the NDIS as they can without really providing services that materially improve the lives of people with disability. And I think we need to drastically tighten up eligibility criteria and the requirements that are put on suppliers to make sure that they are fully performing the roles that taxpayers are paying them to do. But at the moment, the NDIS is growing so quick it will soon eat all of the federal budget and there will be nothing left for anything else.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: Senator, enjoy your time in the Bega Valley and thanks very much for coming in today.

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DAVE SHARMA: Thanks so much for having me on.

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EDDIE WILLIAMS: Dave Sharma, New South Wales Liberal Senator, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, previously an Australian Ambassador to Israel and visiting Bega today.

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