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cabinet to convene next week, energy minister says
s MP, Anne Webster, follows Angie Bell, quoting Victoria’s premier, Jacinta Allen who said “any consideration of supply management should be coordinated at a national level,” and asks again, “when will the minister take action to ensure fuel gets to where it is needed?”
Chris Bowen says there has been national coordination, including a meeting of national cabinet last week, and a fuel supply coordinator.
Bowen says there will be another meeting:
I intend [on] convening again, the Cabinet meeting will meet next week to further coordinate the activity that we are taking and indeed, coordinating that activity is important that we have national consistency.
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Melissa McIntosh gets kicked out of the chamber under 94a
Liberal MP Mary Aldred quotes NSW premier Chris Minns in her question, who said the states told the commonwealth that, “we need to make sure that if there’s going to be demand management measures that are put in place they need to be done on a national level.” Her question to Bowen is the same as Anne Webster and Angie Bell, asking when the minister will take action to ensure fuel gets to where it is needed.
Bowen congratulates Aldred for quoting Minns accurately, after he issued a correction to the chamber after question time yesterday, accusing fellow Liberal Melissa McIntosh for misquoting the NSW premier in her questions.
I thank her [Aldred] for accurately quoting the Premier of New South Wales which is a big step forward after the member for for Lindsay completely misquoted and misrepresented the Premier of New South Wales. She just dropped the word “if” which does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
McIntosh isn’t happy with the drive by from Bowen, and gets up to make a point of order. But Milton Dick isn’t having the complaint, and says the opposition can’t just stand up when they don’t like an answer, and kicks her out.
cabinet to convene next week, energy minister says
s MP, Anne Webster, follows Angie Bell, quoting Victoria’s premier, Jacinta Allen who said “any consideration of supply management should be coordinated at a national level,” and asks again, “when will the minister take action to ensure fuel gets to where it is needed?”
Chris Bowen says there has been national coordination, including a meeting of national cabinet last week, and a fuel supply coordinator.
Bowen says there will be another meeting:
I intend [on] convening again, the Cabinet meeting will meet next week to further coordinate the activity that we are taking and indeed, coordinating that activity is important that we have national consistency.
Opposition wants to see where the fuel is going
Liberal MP Angie Bell is up next and says the Queensland government has called for national plan to increase visibility of where fuel is flowing. She asks, “when will the government take action to get fuel to where it’s needed?”
“This government has been taking action,” says Chris Bowen, who is met with an incredulous expression from Angus Taylor.
Bowen says that some of the 20% of Australia’s minimum stock obligation that has been released has been going to regional areas, including those in Queensland and the NT affected by flooding.
We have arranged for more allocations to support Indigenous communities and get up to Cape York and the farming communities around Cairns and Townsville and prioritise key refuelling sites for long distance freights and families in Queensland.
Milton Dick makes him pause for a minute, and tells the Liberal benches to pipe down, because there’s “too much noise”.
Bowen continues, and takes a stab at the opposition:
One of the towns that has been specifically identified for extra deliveries in Queensland is the town of Texas in Queensland. We are sending fuel to Texas, others had a plan to get fuel from Texas in a crisis.
(He’s referring to a small amount of Australia’s stock that, under the previous Coalition government, was held for less than two years in the US in Texas).
Crossbench question on gambling
Independent MP Nicolette Boele asks the PM when the government will “finally take real action” on gambling to keep Australians safe.
She tries to play at the PM’s ego, saying “plain packaging, the social media ban, Labor governments have shown us they can get these hard but important things done.”
Anthony Albanese starts off saying that his government has done more than any other on the issue (we’ve heard that one before).
He says the government is focused on three things: minimising children’s exposure to wagering advertising, breaking the connection between wagering and sport, and reducing the saturation of targeting of wagering advertising. (But Labor still hasn’t done anything to stop online gambling advertising).
The PM also notes the damage overseas online gambling websites are doing, as well as the harm of pokies around the country. But he gives no indication of what the government will do to crack down on those. Albanese says:
These issues are not simple but the government is working each and every day to make sure that we continue to make a difference and I will continue to report on further reforms.
Bowen says stock has been replaced for the six cancelled or deferred ships
During a dixer, the energy minister, Chris Bowen, has confirmed that the government has sorted replacement stock for the six ships of fuel that he announced were cancelled or deferred.
He says in addition, that the government has secured “at least three more cargo deliveries” for April and May, over and above the normal contracted deliveries.
The Liberals and s appear uninterested in the fact that all those six cancellations have you been filled with new alternative orders.
All of them have now been replaced with alternative spot market orders from different locations.
Dan Tehan, the manager of opposition business is up next and asks “how many service stations have to be out of fuel” before the government will require mandated reporting of service disruption and the immediate redistribution of stock where it is needed.
Bowen maintains that there is no less fuel in Australia than there was before the first strikes on Iran.
But continues to acknowledge that there are very real issues and shortages being faced, particularly in regional and rural Australia.
Bowen then takes a dig at the opposition:
It does strike me that to use those powers [for mandated reporting] we would need to use the legislation that the Treasurer put through the Parliament that the member for Wannon and everyone else over there opposed.
It’s question time!
Angus Taylor starts and asks the prime minister how many service stations around the country have run out of petrol or diesel.
Chris Bowen takes the call and runs through the state-by-state numbers.
New South Wales: 187 with no diesel and 32 without any stock at all, down 19 on yesterday, out of 2,417 service stations.
Queensland: 55 no diesel, and 35 with no regular unleaded
Victoria: 134 with a lack of one or more grades, down 28 on the last report.
South Australia: 49 out of 700 stations
WA: Six with total stock out, four with no diesel out of 771 stations.
Tasmania: One with no diesel and six with no unleaded.
ACT: One station with no diesel.
NT: No shortages, but the energy minister says the territory has been battling natural disaster which is affecting road access.
Average diesel prices pass $3 a litre in almost every capital
Patrick Commins
The average price of diesel has passed $3 for the first time in every capital city besides Darwin, according to the fuel monitoring website, Motormouth.
Motorists have been reporting paying more than that at individual service stations, but the new figures confirm that fuel prices continue to make new records as the US-Israel war on Iran grinds on.
Canberra may not be reporting any fuel shortages, but the nation’s capital is showing the highest average diesel price at $3.10 a litre.
All prices are up by between $1.20 and $1.30 since the start of the month.
The exception is Darwin, which has recorded an increase of $1.12 for diesel and has yet to breach the $3 per litre mark.
Here are the average prices for a litre of diesel:
Sydney $3.07
Melbourne $3.04
Brisbane $3.06
Perth $3
Canberra $3.10
Adelaide $3
Hobart $3.05
Darwin $2.95
Joyce calls on government to trigger liquid fuel emergency act
One Nation MP, Barnaby Joyce, has called on the government to pull the trigger on the liquid fuel emergency act, as he says farmers that have raised concerns that they’re going to have to stop producing food.
Speaking to journalists at Parliament House, Joyce says the crisis is getting worse, and that state premiers are calling for a national emergency response.
This is going to put to bed the financial crisis or the covid crisis, if it continues on this trajectory.
We have the liquid fuel emergency act of 1984, it’s [been] put in place to deal with emergencies such as this. We do not need a bigger emergency.
Pauline Hanson joins Joyce and says she’s not “fear mongering” by joining the call to trigger the emergency act.
The farming sector is very important. If they go under, the whole communities go under.
Sarah Basford Canales
Spender calls for ‘inclusive patriotism’ and ‘radical openness’
Allegra Spender says “inclusive patriotism” and “radical openness” are the antidote for the rise of political extremism within Australia.
At an ANU national security college conference panel this morning, the independent Wentworth MP noted the college’s recent study indicating 53% of Australians felt the federal government shares too little, or far too little, information about security threats.
Spender said she believed when governments failed to be transparent, trust declined.
Right now, the government is not leading the conversation on issues that are sensitive and matter to people, and that is fuelling lower trust and political extremism.
But she also pointed to an idea described as “inclusive patriotism” - a term she learned reading The Great Experiment by Yascha Mounk.
Patriotism, Mounk writes, is a half-wild beast left to its worst instincts. It becomes a weapon used to exclude, to demean, to define the nation against each other, but cultivated well, it is a powerful force. It is what allows an Anglo-Celtic Australian in regional Queensland to feel genuine concern for a Lebanese Australian family in western Sydney.
Spender concluded:
security is not only about the capability of our agencies and our alliances, as important as they are, it is fundamentally about whether the Australian people trust their institutions, feel like they have a stake in this country and believe that when things go wrong, the state and their fellow citizens will have their back.
The answer is not to harden our borders around some imaginary pure Australia. The answer is to build a country where economic security is real, where institutions are trustworthy, where we can have hard conversations rather than avoid them, and where we love our country because it’s where we all belong, not because of who we exclude.
Caitlin Cassidy
ABC union members take over the Landsdowne Hotel in Sydney
More than 100 ABC union members have taken over the Landsdowne Hotel on the edge of Sydney’s CBD after wrapping up a rally outside the Ultimo building earlier this afternoon.
The venue is packed to the gills with staff in union t-shirts reading “we are stronger together” and “press”. There is an understandably long line for rounds of beer that are being put on the union’s tab.
Lara Sonnenschein, a researcher at Four Corners, tells Guardian Australia over the sound of chatter that, since joining the public broadcaster in 2022, she has only just moved to a permanent contract.
The 28-year-old says she’s had to make “really hard choices” about her future to stay at the ABC, including foregoing being able to save for a mortgage and accepting uncertainty in her career to move into different areas.
I feel happy to have secure work now but I know if I want to do something else [at the ABC] I’ll move back to square one ... It’s just so great to see so many people here. We’ve had people on insecure contracts joining [the union], cadets joining, and we’re all standing alongside together.
In pictures: ABC staff around the country go on strike
