QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr BOWEN (McMahon—Minister for Climate Change and Energy) (14:42): I thank the honourable member for his question and for his work in the House, and I'm happy to tell the honourable member and the House that we currently have 48 days worth of petrol in Australia. On the day that Iran was bombed, we had 36 days, so we have increased the supply of petrol by 12 days.

We have 36 days worth of diesel and 30 days worth of jet fuel, which are both more than we had on the day Iran was bombed. In fact, as we speak, across all fuel types we have 6.2 billion litres, which is just under one billion litres more than when Iran was first bombed. This has been achieved by the government working closely with industry, working with our trading partners in South-East Asia through the Prime Minister and Foreign minister and working closely across the board.

Part of that work to ensure fuel supply and fuel security has been to provide factual, calm updates to the Australian people on a regular basis about our fuel situation. The honourable member asked me what policies would hurt that. Well, policies which didn't involve that calm, factual update to the Australian people would do that.

The approach taken by all honourable members has not been the same as that of the government. For example, my shadow minister, the member for Wannon, said on 19 March: The deep concern we have now is that, come early April, mid-April, that's when we're really going to be looking at shortages. Concerning the Australian people, on 25 March, he said, 'Towards the end of April, we are likely to be looking at serious, serious shortages.' Not to be outdone, with April having come and gone with no shortages and no rationing, just a couple of weeks ago, on 20 April, he moved on and said: My deep concern … is … what it looks like for us in June … Moving on, no shortages, just putting the goalposts out further—I now rely on the member for Deakin to ask me a serious question about fuel supply because, when the news is good, the opposition is not interested.

They are not patriots. They are partisans more interested in pointscoring than in constructive engagement. Our approach is to continue to work on fuel supply with our trading partners and to build in the budget a strategic reserve of fuel owned by the Australian people for the Australian people.

That is opposed by those opposite. Also, we believe it's important to give Australians choices to diversify their transport so they can use electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles, because, for every 100,000 EVs in Australia, we avoid three days' worth of petrol use and diesel use. We are pleased that, for example, yesterday the sales figures showed 30 per cent of cars sold in May were electric or plug-in hybrid.

This is huge and is supported by the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, which they would abolish, and by the electric vehicle tax cut, which they would abolish. In many cases, those EVs will be powered by home batteries—426,973 of them—which they would abolish.