Fuel Crisis Exposes PM’s Lack of Leadership

Fuel Crisis Exposes PM’s Lack of Leadership

Make no mistake, Australia is in the grip of a fuel crisis. And in a crisis Australians expect leadership.

Instead, what they have seen over recent weeks is delay, confusion and a Prime Minister slow to act.

I am hearing it firsthand, at field days and local shows, in my day-to-day work across the electorate, on the phone and in the hundreds of emails that are sent to me daily.

Farmers are struggling to get the fuel they need and the number of petrol stations running dry remains high. But supply is only half of the problem. As fuel prices surge, profit margins disappear for businesses and families are under even more pressure as they try to make ends meet.

Thankfully, Australian families and small businesses will now pay less for fuel than they otherwise would have because the Prime Minister was forced to adopt the opposition’s proposal to cut fuel taxes and the heavy vehicle road user charge.

That is overdue relief, but I am concerned that without proper    management any savings will be evaporated away by yet higher prices.

This situation has been made worse by a Prime Minister who spent the first two weeks of this crisis denying its existence and the last four weeks confusing Australians by sending them mixed messages. Then last week spending $20 million of your money for an advertising campaign telling you to take the roof racks off your car to save fuel, while he burned 300,000 litres of fuel jetting across Asia for meetings he could have had via Zoom.

I had hoped that the Prime Minister’s address to the nation would act as a circuit breaker, a reset if you like. But instead, the Prime Minister merely repeated his stale talking points.

Weeks on, the fundamental questions remain unanswered.

If supply has improved, as the government suggests, why are    hundreds of service stations still out of fuel?

What is the plan to ensure fuel gets to where it is needed?

What supports will be available to households and businesses unable to cope with the fuel price shock?

And will the government rule out heavy handed mandates?

In the absence of clear answers to these important questions, mixed messages about how Australians should go about their daily lives serves only to add to the sense of anxiety and concerns being experienced by Australians.

Six weeks into this crisis and I am no clearer on how it will be managed but it has reinforced something I have always believed namely, that as a nation we must unlock the full potential of our natural resources. We need to fast-track exploration and resource projects across the country.

We need to drill and dig to ensure a nation as energy rich as ours never faces another energy crisis like this again.

That course of action will require strong and decisive leadership but if the last six weeks is anything to go by, we’ll probably need a change of government first.