QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator CADELL (New South Wales) (15:04): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by opposition senators today. Today, we heard so many things about what's going on with fuel in Australia. What started out as a right-wing conspiracy is now a full-blown national crisis, according to the government.

What we're seeing is the evolution of denial—it's almost the stages of grief, isn't it, that you go through as a government? You go through denial. You go through negotiation.

We're almost getting to acceptance now, where we accept it's a national crisis. That's where we're almost at. We've heard so many things today.

There's acceptance that our farmers aren't out there getting the diesel they need to crop and to look after their animals. When I was taking note in the last sitting week, I raised the plight of a feedlot supplier that was not able to get food for his animals and was contemplating having to put them down rather than fall foul of animal cruelty laws, except he was finally able to get some via a much more expensive contract.

But we still don't see the understanding here. We don't see the understanding of what really makes regional areas tick. We've seen a water tsar put in charge of the fuel crisis, and we all know that fuel and water do not mix.

You can't have a climate scientist fixing the fuel supplies of the country, because you need a logistics person. You need to get it from the tanks to the people. That's the important bit.

When we talk about the Iran war or the Ukraine gas stuff—we don't have Putin's people, or we don't have Iranians, on the Hume Highway stopping the fuel getting from the tanks to the farmers. It is about logistical supply, and this government is not understanding what's going wrong. They don't even understand the lengths of it.

We heard there's great supply and that we have a hundred million litres per month of high-sulphur fuel that can go out there. It was petrol, not diesel, and apart from one very bad mistake I made in my Ford Everest that cost me $1,200 I know the difference between fuel and petrol. Senator Wong: You didn't.

Senator CADELL: Yes, I did. This is the difference: you can't fill the tractors of this country and you can't fill the trucks of the country on petrol. Everyone says a hundred million litres is a lot.

No, it is less than one litre per person per week. That is the answer of this government to the fuel crisis: one litre per person per week of petrol, not diesel. Then we hear about urea.

We hear about what's going on out there in the world, and we hear about the farmers that won't plant crops and the farmers that won't be able to fertilise crops. They can't plant them, because they haven't got the diesel. They can't fertilise them, because they haven't got the urea.

They can't harvest them, again, because they haven't got the diesel, and then they can't get them to markets. But it's not a problem to this government. Every part of this will go.

In six months time, when people are having trouble putting food on the table or it's way more expensive, it will be because of what is not happening now. We are not getting logistics out, we're not getting the food planted, and we are making poor decisions because we never accepted this was a problem months ago. It's not just food.

Today, I'm hearing that poly pipe in the construction industry, the big coils of pipe that are used to make things, comes from fuel and oil. Did you know—I didn't know this, Deputy President—that one-third of the glue that makes kitchens and plyboard for housing construction uses urea. So the biggest constructor of kitchens in the country has three weeks supply, or no more kitchens, no more boards, no more construction and no more housing.

So, when we're bringing a thousand people a day into the country, there'll be nowhere to put them because we can't build the homes they need—just as we haven't in the past. This government is failing on every level in this crisis: failure to accept it, failure to deal with it and failure to have plans to fix the consequences of it. It isn't hard to put some things in place.

You don't sit around a table and talk this problem out of existence. You don't blame others for not getting the fuel from the tanks to the users. You don't stand there in front of boards and say, 'The ACCC will fix that.' I've been involved in three actions with the ACCC in courts, and they have lost every single one.

But you are putting all your faith in them, and it is not good enough. So let's get real. Let's get the logistics working.

Let's get the fuel out there. We're hearing six ships have been turned back or cancelled. There are reports now that potentially eight more have been turned back.

Just in the last hour, we're hearing that. We are at the end of the tether. We have, for so long, taken it for granted that Australia will be a beneficial at the end of this.

You cannot have sovereignty of your decision-making unless you have food security, fuel security and economic security. The decisions you're making are stripping Australia of its sovereignty, because we are at the behest of everyone else in the world. And we deserve better.