Topics: Fuel shortages, Oil refineries, Chris Bowen comments

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CHRIS KENNY: Let's go to Canberra now where Dave Sharma, the Shadow Assistant Minister for International Development, has wandered the corridors, found his way up into the second floor of the Senate side and the Sky News studios, and is prepared to talk to me. Thanks for joining us, Dave. I've got to get your thoughts first up on how Chris Bowen is handling the fuel supply shortage today. I noticed in Parliament today he was much more detailed going through how many stations have run out of how much fuel in every state.

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, finally the government's beginning to provide answers after last week telling us there was nothing to worry about and accusing anyone who was asking questions of fearmongering. Today they've started to detail just the level of shortages we're seeing, and it's pretty striking. I mean, there's 8% of service stations across Australia— that's about 500 to 550 service stations— that are out of at least one type of fuel. And the figures that Chris Bowen gave today are considerably worse than those that he gave just yesterday. So I think it's long past time that the government levelled with the Australian public because everyone knew, I think, if the Strait of Hormuz closes and Australia being where we are and being as dependent as we are on the importation of liquid fuels, we were going to feel that pretty quickly and pretty sharply. And that has turned out to be the case.

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CHRIS KENNY: So we all know that there are two problems here long term. One is the closure of refineries in Australia. The other is the lack of storage. We don't have enough storage in this country. Both of those go back a long period, so they cover Coalition and Labor governments. But what is this government doing wrong on this issue right now?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think it's a couple of things. Firstly, the government has not done anything in the last 5 years since they came to office. It was the Coalition that passed the Fuel Security Act that helped establish the framework for the minimum stockholding obligation. Since that time, we've seen a war in Europe. The Russia-Ukraine war, and a war in the Middle East has been going for 2.5 years. That's the time that the government should have been using to basically increase the resilience and security of our supply chain, increase the stockholding obligations. We saved 2 refineries from closing when we were in government. The government should have done more, I think, to see what we could do to improve our refining capacity.

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CHRIS KENNY: All right, now, what you've done in Parliament and outside of it is to be commended, though. I think everyone in the country wants to know the facts And you've pushed hard and, as you said before, got a lot more detail out of the government today. Yet Chris Bowen seems to think that you're being unpatriotic. Have a look.

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[CLIP STARTS]

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CHRIS BOWEN: The government will work with anyone of goodwill, as we have done across the board. We have not heard a single constructive suggestion from the opposition in this debate. Not a single one. Mr Speaker, there's been plenty of sledging and no solutions. The leadership of the Liberal Party has chosen partisanship, not patriotism, and they should hang their heads in shame.

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[CLIP ENDS]

CHRIS KENNY: What do you reckon? The patriotism, the last refuge of the scoundrel, or the Coalition not being patriotic by pointing out what's going on here?

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DAVE SHARMA: I think that's a good Samuel Johnson quote. I think that's Samuel Johnson. Look, I think if the Labor government has to accuse us of a lack of patriotism, we'll take that any day to draw attention to the plight that Australians are facing. It's our job to hold the government to account. They've been refusing to level with the public or with the Parliament about the depths of this crisis. It's about time they did.

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CHRIS KENNY: Now, should we be looking at rationing now just to make sure that we don't run out altogether?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I noticed Chris Bowen has held open that option today. I wouldn't like to see it come to that, but clearly, we need to start planning for future contingencies. So I think we need to be making sure that the people who are integral to our economy, and that's farmers, manufacturers, truckers that keep the keep the wheels turning of our economy. We need to make sure that they're getting access to the fuel they need, otherwise other things will grind to a halt.

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CHRIS KENNY: Dave Sharma, thanks for joining us. I appreciate it. Dave Sharma there live from Canberra.

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[ENDS]