Interview with Emma Rebellato, ABC News Breakfast

HOST, EMMA REBELLATO: Well, the big question out of all of this is, of course, how will this affect the current fuel situation in the country? Energy Minister Chris Bowen joins us now from Sydney. Minister, thanks for your time this morning.

MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY, CHRIS BOWEN: Thanks, Emma. Good morning. How will it affect our supplies?

So, this fire broke out at 11pm last night. I've been communicating with the Chief Executive through the night. He's been on site all night.

It is still not yet under control. At this point, the refinery is still producing diesel and jet fuel at reduced levels as a safety precaution, but is still producing, still operating. The major impact at this point appears to be more on petrol production but we'll work closely with Viva over the course of today.

Obviously, the fire is still burning so we can't make any final sort of conclusions about the impact. It's not a positive development. It will have an impact, but at this point production of diesel and jet fuel does continue and there's no reason to believe at this point that there's need to stop that.

The impact on petrol production, I'm sure petrol production will continue, but it may be impacted for some time, obviously. What was your reaction when you heard this news? I mean, this is only one of two oil refineries.

Fuel supplies, you know, everyone's talking about it. Everyone's worried. How did you react when you heard what happened?

Well, never a dull moment, Emma, and not great timing. But, you know, we manage these things. This is no one's fault.

It appears to be, obviously, there'll be an investigation, but no suspicious circumstances. It appears to be an accident at this point. What's important is we come together and manage the situation.

It's important, as we've always said, that people buy as much fuel as they need, but no more, no less. We continue to make very good progress internationally on the imports to Australia, which is the majority of fuel that we consume, obviously, as I've always said, since the 28th of February. This is a febrile international environment, fast changing, rays of sunshine and setbacks in terms of the geopolitical environment in the Middle East.

What we can do is one, work closely with our two domestic refineries. I speak to the Chief Executives several times a day of those two refineries. And then two, work to maximise Australian access to the fuel, particularly in South East Asia.

That's why the Prime Minister is in Southeast Asia playing an absolute blinder, I might say, ensuring that we are maximising the chances of Australia in this very difficult international environment. Does this make the government, though, even more anxious about having to secure fuel supplies and potentially get more supplies as well? Yeah, look, we've put those arrangements in place to go and get more supplies through Export Finance Australia.

I made announcements about progress on that yesterday. We'll have more to say about further progress. That is about getting extra fuel supply into Australia, additional to what already would have come.

That's why we legislated that urgently a couple of weeks ago. That's been progressing very well. Look, this is not a positive development in Geelong.

Let's not pretend somehow that this won't have some sort of impact. But, as I said, we will carefully, methodically, manage it with the refinery. And I and Viva will update Australians with the very best and latest information, as and when, we determine the full impact.

Minister where are we at with supplies right now, where are we seeing shortages still? Well domestically we're still seeing around 2% of service stations without diesel, so that's been very good progress. Obviously, we want to see that come down to 0%, but we are still dealing with the overhang of very high demand.

Internationally, I give an update every Saturday about where we're at. We have the domestic supply, but we also have 57 ships on their way to Australia. Some of them have arrived this week.

I'll give a further update over the course of Saturday and also, we have locked in 4.1 billion litres of supply of crude oil, diesel, petrol, jet fuel over the next four weeks. You mentioned the Prime Minister is overseas at the moment in Malaysia. Now, there's a lot of pressure here to increase taxes on gas.

Now, given all these discussions that are going on about fuel supplies, Malaysia, for one, won't be happy about this. Is that going to influence any Government decision moving forward into the May budget? Well, Emma, as you said, May budget.

We are currently not in May. We're in April. The budget will be brought down on the second Tuesday in May by the Treasurer, not the Energy Minister.

I don't comment on Cabinet deliberations. We consider a whole range of circumstances, obviously, but I'm not announcing budget measures today. The Treasurer will do that in May.

The Acting Prime Minister, Defence Minister Richard Marles will be announcing defence spending today, an extra $53 billion. Where is this money going to be spent? Look, I'll leave the Deputy Prime Minister to make his announcements, but obviously it is a very challenged international time, obviously.

It is not getting easier geopolitically, and Australians would hope and expect that we are making the necessary investments, and we are. Given what we've been seeing around the world, though, is this too little too late? No, not at all.

These things are carefully calibrated. I think Australians expect governments to spend any dollar, whether it's defence or anything else, carefully after due consideration. You don't set an arbitrary target and work back.

You work out the needs of the country, the needs of the Defence Force, what is a justified investment, and then make the necessary decisions. You don't set a target and then work back. You set decisions based on all the very best evidence.

That's what the National Security Committee and the Cabinet have done, and that's what the Deputy Prime Minister will work through later today. Energy Minister Chris Bowen, thanks for your time. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.

We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.