QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (15:02): I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors (Senator McAllister) to a question without notice asked by Senator Ruston today relating to aged care. I was really interested to hear the responses from Senator McAllister, the Minister representing the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, to Senator Ruston in relation to the impacts on older Australians of fuel shortages, and I was really disturbed to not actually hear any particular answer at all.
It is an absolute and significant problem that fuel shortages in regional areas will mean that services like Meals on Wheels can't reach the people that they need to reach. We didn't get a single answer from Minister McAllister as to what the government is doing to facilitate those services to ensure that they're ongoing. We got an answer that included listing different agencies that offer 'free, independent and confidential advice'.
They're the words that the minister used. To be frank, I don't think the services are after free, independent and confidential advice. I think they're after certainty as to how their services are going to continue to run if there are fuel shortages ongoing and if the service stations and petrol stations actually run out of fuel—and we have seen that.
That is not something that the opposition is talking about; that is something that is actually happening out in the community. It is not something that, as has been described by those opposite, is extremist scaremongering; it is the lived reality of Australians across our country. We had the New South Wales premier come out today—the New South Wales Labor premier—and provide information about how many service stations across New South Wales have already run out of diesel.
So we have—and I'll read it—not far-right, extremist scaremongering, as those opposite would suggest, but facts provided by a New South Wales Labor premier that some one in 13 New South Wales petrol stations have run out of diesel. And when Senator Ruston has asked these questions we have had nothing but prevarication from those opposite, when right now what Australians need is certainty and trust from their government.
They need to know what is actually going on, and they are not getting that, and that is not good enough. We had answers around disruption of global supply, talk of unprecedented stock impacts in the Middle East but nothing around what is actually going to happen here in Australia—what plans this government actually has to stem the issues we are seeing here. We can talk about how everyday Australians can manage their fuel purchasing, but what we haven't had in an answer from those opposite is how we are going to protect our most vulnerable Australians who rely on services when the fuel supplies that the service providers need are not there.
To be frank, I think it's somewhat shameful that those questions were not answered in the direct manner they should have been. (Time expired)