Albanese fails to act on petrol shortages – Sky News NewsDay

Zoe McKenzie MP

Shadow Cabinet Secretary

Shadow Assistant Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations

Member for Flinders

TRANSCRIPT
SKY NEWS NEWSDAY WITH TRUDY MCINTOSH AND ANDREW CHARLTON
Thursday, 26 March 2026

Topics: Fuel supplies; Australia-EU FTA.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: We are in the lead up to question time and there’s one thing on everyone’s mind here in Parliament and that is the fuel crisis. I’m joined by our regular Thursday panel, the cabinet secretary panel I’m calling it, Cabinet Secretary Andrew Charlton and the Shadow Cabinet Secretary Zoe McKenzie. Thanks so much for your time today. Barnaby Joyce said this morning a plan is better than panic. Are we at the point where we don’t have a plan and people are panicking? Is that what’s happening?

ANDREW CHARLTON: No, we do have a plan and we’re executing that plan and that plan has been clear right from the beginning. The first thing the government did in fact before the election was to make sure that we brought Australia’s fuels onshore, our fuel reserve onshore. Secondly, we released 20% of that fuel reserve. Third we made sure that more of the fuel that is made in Australia stays in Australia. Fourth we made sure that that fuel gets to the regions where it’s needed. Fifth we made sure the ACCC is policing any price gouging and now we’re convening the National Cabinet.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: So why are the number of stations that are out of fuel going up if all of these things are happening and there’s a plan? Is this just the pain we need to go through for a few weeks? When will the number come down?

ANDREW CHARLTON: No, the government has been working consistently to make sure that we do everything we can to provide the supply of fuel that Australia needs. Of course there has been a demand response and that demand response has created acute shortages in some areas with some fuel stations not having fuel to provide to consumers. The government has been working consistently on this series of measures and as the crisis continues to evolve and deepen so will our plan and approach.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: Zoe are you reassured by what Andrew said there? There is a plan?

ZOE MCKENZIE: No.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: It seems like things will be fine.

ZOE MCKENZIE: So I’m going to call it. I think it’s time. It’s time to make Andrew Charlton the Energy Minister, because not two weeks ago Chris Bowen was standing up in Question Time telling us no problem and if there was a problem it’s because people were going out and filling up their cars which they shouldn’t do. Let’s talk about what the problem actually looks like in the real world. In my electorate today diesel is three bucks sixteen if you can get it. I’ve got at least one station that doesn’t have any diesel anymore. You’ve got people not coming down to the Peninsula on the weekends, not spending their hard-earned cash on a weekend away enjoying a bit of Peninsula wine because they don’t want to get in their car. I’ve got friends who are like planning to leave their diesel cars somewhere to borrow a friend’s petrol car to get to the city. You can’t say there’s no problem and the solution is not another roundtable, another bureaucrat, more regulation, red tape, delay, and inevitable cost that makes people unsurprisingly go out and fill up their car because they’re not sure they’re going to be able to next week. All the things Andrew cited may well have been done but they have been brought kicking and screaming to action. Blind Freddie could have seen something needed to be done two weeks ago and yet at that point Chris Bowen was still telling us nothing to see here and tell your people to calm down.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: Energy Minister Chris Bowen yesterday on this program said that we’re not at the point of rationing yet, we’re not even at the point of the voluntary measures that Australians should be asked if they could conserve fuel. Why then are some of our closest partners like South Korea for example, top supplier of diesel, it’s now asking people to limit use in terms of their car, even things like vacuuming only on the weekend. Should the government be getting ahead of this and saying to people look this is the sort of things we may need to do, it’s not today, maybe that would stop some of the panic if there was a clear message out there.

ANDREW CHARLTON: Of course the government has been contingency planning and Chris Bowen has been clear about those contingency plans right from the get-go.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: What are they though in terms of those voluntary measures or rationing measures? I’m not sure…

ZOE MCKENZIE: Behavioural measures, people are doing it themselves.

ANDREW CHARLTON: Well Chris Bowen has been very clear and he’s described the national emergency measures. We have a playbook for this precisely in the event of a national fuel shortage. The Prime Minister is convening the National Cabinet on Monday to work through these issues. Zoe is entirely wrong, the government was not in any way brought kicking and screaming to those significant measures that have been done to secure our fuel supply. In fact they were done early at a time when all of the ships that we are expecting to come to Australia have been coming to Australia. So at this stage we do not have a supply problem and that’s why we’ve been taking these actions early to make sure if things change we’re prepared for those changes. But I’ll say one more thing Trudy and that is everything that Zoe has just said, is the reason why so many voters are leaving the Liberals and moving to One Nation. Because at a time of national crisis, they expect the Liberal Party, a party of government with sensible people in that party like Zoe, to be providing solutions, not slogans. Policy, not politics. Contributions, not complaints. And yet in the entire answer you had there from Zoe, similar to all of their frontbench this week, not a single positive contribution. And do you know what the Australian people are saying? They’re saying, well, if all the Liberal Party is going to do is throw rocks in a national crisis, then I may as well be voting for the rock-thrower-in-chief, and that’s Pauline Hanson. The Liberal Party needs to realise this is a Team Australia moment and they need to be providing constructive solutions, not slogans and politics.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: Zoe, here’s your chance. What are some of those constructive solutions?

ZOE MCKENZIE: I love it when the Labor Party says, well, you tell us what to do, right? We can’t work it out. We can’t fix the problem. Andrew, the things you describe are fair and well, but the lived reality, particularly in New South Wales, you’ve got over 600 service stations with no fuel, you’ve got farmers who can’t do their job, you’ve got people filling jerrycans up all over the country because they know when they turn up at that next fuel depot a couple of hundred kilometres down the road, they’re not going to find anything. So I hear you, mate. The one thing I was really right about was that you would do a bloody better job than Chris Bowen is. He’s hopeless.

ANDREW CHARLTON: Everything we’ve just heard, we’ve heard from Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson, who are very good at complaint, very good at grievance. What we want from the Liberal Party is to say…

ZOE MCKENZIE: …Is to do your job for you! No!

ANDREW CHARLTON: I’ve explained what our plan is. If you have a different plan, front up with it. Otherwise, accept that we’re executing our plan.

ZOE MCKENZIE: I accept that you’re hopeless.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: It’s not just the federal opposition that’s throwing rocks, in your words. There has also been pushback, I thought, notable from some of the state premiers. Jacinta Allan today even talking about if there is to be Commonwealth rationing, it needs to be Commonwealth-led. Chris Minns saying the same thing. Essentially, it seems like the states are trying to learn the lesson from COVID, where they went it alone and it caused a lot more confusion in the country. Is that what’s going to happen on Monday? Are the National Cabinet going to emerge or is there a plan of here’s what will happen in terms of voluntary measures and even potentially compulsory measures in terms of rationing?

ANDREW CHARLTON: Well, the Prime Minister has convened a National Cabinet to provide national leadership in our federation. We’ve appointed a fuel coordinator in distinguished bureaucrat, Anthea Harris. I’m not going to front run what might come out of the meeting on Monday.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: Would it be better if it was held tomorrow? What’s with the timing? Why does it need to be Monday? Couldn’t it be tomorrow?

ANDREW CHARLTON: This is the appropriate mechanism to deal with a national issue like this. To bring the states together through the National Cabinet. To put in place mechanisms to coordinate and work together. Obviously it takes time to bring together all of the leaders of our states and territories. But that’s the appropriate leadership role for the Prime Minister to be playing at this time.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: So are you reassured by the fact that there is a meeting, they are going to get together, the states this time around at least compared with what happened in COVID are saying that they do want this to be national. We saw the breakaway approach and how fractured that really made the country. Are you at least reassured that that National Cabinet will be coming together Monday?

ZOE MCKENZIE: No, because I’ve seen a few National Cabinets now and I’ve seen a few roundtables and a few meetings and I’ve seen a lot of Chris Bowen standing up saying I’ve got this, I’ve got this, I’ve got this. But each day tens if not hundreds of more fuel stations run out of fuel and the price keeps going up. I did a video in my electorate on Monday morning, the price had just cracked three bucks. Now it’s at 315.9. It’s just outrageous what people are having to pay even though we keep being told there’s no problem. So if there’s no problem, send a cop out on the beat. Go and talk to the fuel suppliers. Go and talk to the retailers. Get the prices down so people stop basically panicking because they don’t know if they can get their kid to school next week. They don’t know if they can get away next week and they want to, Easter’s around the corner. That’s a huge time for my electorate of Flinders where people come down for the Easter holidays. The streets were empty last weekend, in March, and we can’t afford an Easter that fizzles.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: Can I ask you in the broader sense about the economic shock that this is likely to have? The Treasurer has said that in terms of the impact on inflation and economic growth. You were there during the GFC working for Kevin Rudd. Is this going to be a bigger shock to the global economy than that was or are you confident we can get on top of it?

ANDREW CHARLTON: Well look, at this stage the Treasurer has been clear about outlining the scenarios that the Treasurer has been modelling. We are away from those scenarios because we’re in the early stages of this crisis. We don’t know how long the crisis will be. What we do know is that Australia won’t be immune from the economic effects of this crisis. We’re not immune from them today and we certainly won’t be immune from them if the crisis drags longer. But one thing I will say is that you would prefer to be in Australia than almost any other country dealing with an economic shock of this nature. And that’s because the Government has over the last four years done the hard work of getting inflation down from 7% where the Liberals left it. We have done the work of driving strong economic growth, amongst the strongest economic growth now in the OECD, and we have one of the lowest levels of national debt of any country. So yes, Australia is not immune from the economic effects but we are relatively well positioned.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: Final one Zoe. You used to work for the former Trade Minister Andrew Robb. We saw the EU Free Trade Agreement agreed this week. Is your instinct that the Coalition should support this despite some of the reservations we’re hearing from the agricultural groups?

ZOE MCKENZIE: So you’ve got to remember that we haven’t even seen the text of the EU FTA. It will be released in coming days. It’s got to be translated into 24 languages on the European side and go through a legal scrub. After that it will come to the treaties committee where we will appropriately interrogate every single provision. Yes, it does provide good market entry in relation to important things like services, investment, critical minerals, but we do seem to be underdone in relation to agriculture. Can I say, sheep meat in particular. The quotas given to Mercosur and indeed to New Zealand are much more generous than the ones given to us. We will see what can be done there. We will have a look at it, work out if it’s fair, and then at the end of the year, I presume, hopefully, so that our exporters get the best tariff reductions possibly, it will go through the Australian Parliament.

TRUDY MCINTOSH: Zoe McKenzie, Andrew Charlton, really appreciate your time today. Thank you.

ENDS.