David Littleproud
Maranoa · National Party · Australia
“In those communities we enjoyed relatively normal insurance premiums for 10 years—around $2,000 or $3,000 to insure a home in those communities.”
“I would say to the Queensland government to go out; do not rely on the department that has allowed this planning monstrosity to take place to continue to advise you. Get in the car. It's less than three hours from Brisbane. Go and sit in the Duff and Franz front yards, look at this and understand the impact on nonhosts.”
“How can we let the insurance industry determine how the modelling of our premiums is determined, at whim and without any transparency or public oversight?”
“I want to bring to the parliament's attention a matter I raised previously, the Wambo Wind Farm and the human toll that it's taking on the Duffs and the Franzes—the Franzes in particular. They are 80-year-old retirees who have farmed, and want to continue to farm, next to their son.”
“A survey by the local council there said that 37 per cent of residents no longer have insurance—that's insurance for anything; forget just for floods. They can't get insurance on their homes for anything. Overlay that with a young couple that wants to go and get their first mortgage.”
“I rise to update the House on the unfolding insurance crisis in western Queensland. Just to recap, back in 2011-12, St George, Charleville and Roma had huge floods that inundated our communities. There was no protection. There were no levee banks.”
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“They are full of it, and the reality is they are cleaning up the Australian taxpayer and having a red-hot laugh at us. This is an opportunity for this parliament to go back to the drawing board and get this right—to add onto the work that this government is doing with respect to the new technology that's coming and to fix the mistakes of the past. That's what a good parliament would do, a parliament that understands the complexities of a universal right of telecommunications to keep us all safe and to give us the opportunity to go and make a quid. That's what we want. We're not asking for a cent—not one brass razoo. I'm not saying we want one more cent, apart from that $270 million to force Telstra to do the job that they are paid to do and to do a job that they could do. If they don't, get rid of them. Who cares.”
“But the telcos don't want that, particularly Telstra, because they use regional Australia as their biggest advertisement in the cities, saying they have the most coverage across Australia. They use us as their selling point but screw us over and give us nothing in return in terms of the infrastructure we need—so much so that the ACCC found just the other day that the claim they made in some of their advertising about the coverage they had was actually false. I could have told you that five years ago. They're full of it. The reality is that Telstra's been found out, so let's not let them dictate terms about how our telecommunications should be in this country. They don't care. They gave up a long time ago, and I gave up on Telstra a long time ago.”
“I'm not saying that you should get it for free. I'm saying that what the telcos should do is tell us what it costs to have roaming on your phone. If you go overseas and you decide to take roaming, you pay $5 a month or $5 a week or whatever it is. Give us the number and let the consumer decide whether they want roaming so they can use any tower. I'm not asking the telcos to pay for it. I'm simply saying, 'Why don't you give us the number?' It might be $10 a month, $20 a month or $25 a month. The consumer should decide. They should be able to decide that they can go under any mobile phone tower in this country and use it if they're prepared to pay for it.”
“We are simply saying, 'Let's reallocate that $270 million to make sure those towers are maintained.' While we're at it, why wouldn't we look at mandated roaming? I congratulate the government's move towards mandated roaming in emergency circumstances. But we face emergency circumstances every day in rural and regional Australia. The Mobile Black Spot Program allowed Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to all apply. We've got stranded assets across regional Australia. You might go through a Vodafone tower, then you hit two Telstra towers and then you hit an Optus one. Unless you've got three different phones that connect into them, they're basically useless. So why wouldn't we look at that? The ACCC, when they last looked at this, made a mess of it, to be honest. They said that we shouldn't have mandated roaming.”
“This is an opportunity to say, 'Let's get this right.' Let's actually pause and understand the complexity of the problem and not leave a gap, which—hands up—we've all missed. But it's one we've always fought to close in the National Party. This is pivotal to getting the telecommunications right in this country. We can simply say that we are not asking for any extra money. We are asking for a reallocation of that $270 million, which doesn't need to go towards addressing these low-orbit satellites and the new technology that's going on. We don't even own that infrastructure. But we own the infrastructure that was there, which we gave as a free hit to these telcos, who are making money out of it.”
“But, because there are fewer landlines and because there are fewer payphones, Telstra's having a red-hot crack at us. They're having a red-hot crack at the Australian taxpayer. Who wouldn't want a contract for $270 million to do three-fifths of bugger all? There are no payphones to fix—so much so that they made them free to use anywhere around Australia—and the landlines are definitely going down in usage. There will be a day when technology will take out the need for the copper, and that's a good thing, even in those remote places in my electorate, like Birdsville, west of Longreach and even west of Roma, where you can't get mobile phone coverage so you still need that landline for that hour of need to ring the flying doctor.”
“It puts our lives at risk, and that's why we've been passionate, as the National Party, to stand up and say we can't go on with this any longer and that this is a risk to our wellbeing. It's not just for us to be able to get on with the commerce of feeding and clothing you and sending the resources in to save the bills. This is something that, as a parliament, I think we should come together and fix. This is a positive step that the government has taken with respect to the new technology, but it's missing the opportunity that lays there for us. I say to the government: please go back to the drawing board and add this. It's not asking for any more money. We're not saying we want more than the $270 million that goes out every year in the universal service obligation.”
“There'll be some other entrepreneur out there that'll want to take this contract up, and they'll want to go and make sure that these landlines and these payphones—whatever's left of them—as well as the mobile phone towers across Australia are maintained. That's a universal right that we deserve as Australians. This is a universal service that saves us. Society has evolved because of the technology that's been provided to this country, and that's a great thing. But none of us should be left behind. I say to the government that the opportunity that lays ahead has been missed. It is right to ensure that there are regulatory guardrails around the new technology, but missing what's there is a missed opportunity. It does risk lives.”
“So why wouldn't we, as legislators, amend this bill to also regulate to ensure that the universal service obligation is extended to mobile telephony infrastructure to protect every Australian? I understand now. We've been battling for this for years for those that live in regional and rural Australia, and it's only now that this cancer has grown from regional and rural Australia to periurban Australia that we are understanding why there is action. This is why it's important, as legislators, that we get this right. We can fix it. If there's $270 million a year being paid to Telstra through a universal service obligation contract, then we have every right to change that. If Telstra doesn't want to do that, who cares?”
“I'm proud of the National Party that made the reform around USO pivotal to our policy pitch to make sure not just that landlines and payphones are protected but that mobile phone infrastructure—particularly that you, the Australian taxpayer, have paid for—is maintained and kept to a standard to protect every Australian. That's where we should go. Even with low-orbit-satellite technology, which is what we're moving towards to regulate here—and congratulations to the government for taking those steps; it's the right thing to do; it honestly is—the telcos themselves will tell you that their mobile phone infrastructure that is there, those towers that are right across, will still be required for backhaul and backup.”
“Let me say to those in this chamber today that we face that sort of risk and that sort of outcome that we saw because triple zero went down because of Optus every day in regional, rural and remote Australia. Our mobile phone towers don't work. There's no regulatory guardrail for them to be fixed. That's the sort of risk that we face up to every day. While there's a national outpouring of mourning for the families that were lost, understand that that happens to us every single day. Our whole communities lose mobile phone towers for a couple of weeks. We lose them along our highways. This is where we've got to understand the technology that's there also needs to be protected.”
“That is why this bill should actually extend to the existing infrastructure that's there, particularly that mobile telephony, to hold these telcos to account, to remove the averaging provisions as a penalty, to make sure that telcos are there, johnny-on-the-spot, to fix these problems not just with landlines and payphones but with mobile phone towers. In the town of Dalby—12,000 people live in Dalby—Telstra took down their mobile phone coverage service for nearly two weeks. They did not care one iota about the fact that the good people of Dalby had no mobile telephony for nearly two weeks. That is a disgrace. My heart pours out to the families who lost loved ones because of the triple zero fiasco only less than 12 months ago.”
“In fact, I even have a photo sent to my electorate office of Telstra's ability to actually repair a landline out near Roma. I think it was between Roma and Injune. They've actually run a new line from the main telephone power line coming down the highway, and, instead of putting new poles up, they've actually wrapped it around a couple of gum trees through to the house and attached it to the house. That was their way of fixing this landline for these people who'd been waiting for nearly six months. Telstra is having a lend of us. $270 million a year, and they use average provisions to be able to take the money off the Australian taxpayer. I grant you, about $100 million of that is Australian taxpayers, and $170 million is what's levied of the telcos, but they are effectively having a go at us all.”
“In the case of very remote stations in my own electorate out in western Queensland in the outback, it's their only communication to get the flying doctor in. But under the old universal service obligation, the only requirement for the telcos to go and fix these landlines has an averaging provision. So even the Productivity Commission found that Telstra, who have the contract for the universal service obligation and who gets $270 million a year to maintain those payphones and to maintain those landlines, were actually averaging the provisions of repairing landlines in capital cities because, lo and behold, that's where their technicians were, but they were averaging provisions out in the outback. In my own electorate, I can tell you that in Birdsville and Roma, they were taking three, six, 12, 18 months to repair landlines.”
“We put in place over 1,500 when we were in government under that black spot program, but there is no regulatory framework to make the telcos maintain them to the standards of which they're meant to. A mobile phone tower should in its establishment cover around a 14-kilometre radius. Now, in many of the cases because the batteries aren't being maintained, there is no service, and there is no requirement on the telcos to go and repair those towers. In regional and rural Australia, that has actually diminished, and, in fact, many of them are flat out being able to cover the towns in which they reside in or even the highways that they cover. But even worse is when they say, 'Well, we still get our landlines out there.' In many cases, a landline is all we can use.”
“This government is taking one step too far in terms of forgetting that there is still technology that we rely on out there in regional Australia, and the universal service obligation should be extended to existing telephony infrastructure that much of the Australian taxpayer has paid for, not the telcos but the Australian taxpayer through the black spots program that we put in place when we were in government we put in place. That was there to try and give coverage to people in regional Australia. But, unfortunately, the universal service obligation still only controls the landlines and payphones and omits covering the maintenance of mobile phone towers.”
“But there is an important admission in this bill that doesn't go to actually address much of the framework that is already in place through the universal service obligation. The universal service obligation was put in place when Telstra was privatised, and, at that stage, the technology that was available to every Australian were landlines and payphones. There were around 60,000 payphones when Telstra was privatised. We're now down to about 14,000. I mean, the only people using payphones at the moment are drug dealers. No-one is using payphones at the moment, and landlines are becoming less and less frequent. But, unfortunately, the universal service obligation has not moved with the technology.”
“I stand to support the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025 in principle and support what the government is trying to achieve here in the evolving shape of telecommunications. Particularly for those of us that represent rural and remote electorates, it's important. This evolving technology gives us hope because, at the moment, there isn't a lot of hope for us. Many of the telcos have packed up and left, and that cancer that started in regional Australia is now spreading to peri-urban areas around capital cities. It's admirable that the government is trying to keep pace with the change in technology, and that is important.”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Forty young Australian founders have written an open letter to the Prime Minister saying: 'Rather than back us, the Prime Minister has ambushed us with a massive tax increase, a tax that will hit us, the Australians we hire and the investors who believe in us the hardest. This aspiration ambush doesn't just impact tech startups either. It impacts every growing business in Australia.' Does the Prime Minister finally acknowledge that his budget of broken promises and higher taxes will hurt Australian small-business owners?”
“Even when you talk about housing—I will give credit where credit is due—the $2 million that they've announced around helping the last piece of infrastructure in housing across this country is a great thing, but it's a fraction of what we announced at the last election. You have market failure in many of these communities. A block of land in Charleville will probably cost you $60,000 to develop— A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 12:24 to 12:36 Debate adjourned.”
“We contribute, we're paying the bills, we're feeding you, we're clothing you and we're putting a whole lot onto trains that go out the port which allows you to be able to have the infrastructure and the cities that you enjoy and you take for granted. We're not asking for a lot. We're just asking for some potholes to be filled in. We're asking for some water to be to be able to grow some more food for you. We're talking about simplistic things like technology that would be able to give us the tools to be able to operate a business in the 21st century and to keep us alive and safe, being treated fairly and being able to say that we are part of Australia in a way that is valued.”
“Now the one organisation that was set up with just $20 million—I mean, most departments have spilled that before smoko on a Monday—they took 20 mil away from the regional tech hub to help regional Australians navigate technology to keep them alive. Where is the national outrage on that? Are our lives not as valuable as those that lost them on the east coast when triple zero didn't work? I have a community of Dalby, and 12,000 people didn't have mobile service for two weeks. No-one cared. No-one batted an eyelid about this in Canberra when you raised it with the minister or anyone else. This is the reality that we live in regional Australia, and this budget just goes to show that it just feels as though this government hates us. They don't think that there's any value of us living in regional Australia.”
“This was an organisation that was funded by the Commonwealth through the NFF to help people in regional Australia navigate new technology and find new technological ways to be able to keep themselves safe—not just do business but keep ourselves safe. I feel sorry for the families, my heart bleeds for the families, who lost loved ones in that triple zero outage. But let me tell you, come and have a walk through western Queensland. This mobile phone isn't worth the paper it's written on. It's worthless. It doesn't work in half the places because we haven't got the connectivity. We've had the investment stripped away from more mobile phone towers and better regulatory reform for protecting us.”
“We're pouring all these people into capital cities, but there's no chefs sitting at the pubs in Barcaldine, the home of the Labor Party. We cannot get the skilled workers because of this ideology that has just gone out of control, and we are paying the bill for it. And then you get to telecommunications. Again, we've seen this heartless response by this government—tools that we need. There was outrage across this country when triple zero didn't work on the east coast. That was tragic. But let me tell you, we face that every day. Triple zero doesn't work for us most days because our mobile phones don't work, and what this government has taken out of this budget is the regional tax hubs.”
“We should be saying to them, 'We want these skilled people to live in regional Australia.' But instead we've had this open door policy to send them all into Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and there's been an epiphany here in Canberra by the Treasurer to go, 'We've got to help young people get into housing.' You keep fuelling demand by letting these people pour in. It doesn't cost us a cent to use some common sense and stop the migration rot that has gone on, this mass migration, and have the numbers that we need where we need them to come. But we've even had those tools taken away from us because we had the agricultural visa taken away. We have communities that can't get mechanics. I've got communities where pubs cannot even open at night to put meals on because they can't get cooks.”
“And now, because of this ideological budget, they've decided to tax housing more when effectively all they need to do is actually reduce migration. This government's going to bring 2 million people into this country, and they're not just being poured into capital cities. We're missing out in the regions where we need skilled workers. They have bought in people that haven't got the skills that we need. They were prioritising dog groomers and martial arts instructors up until about 12 months ago, rather than maybe some engineers, some roofers, some tilers, some builders. I mean, that's just common sense. We're giving the greatest gift we can give to any person on this planet—a ticket to Australia. We should pick and choose who comes here and where they live.”
“For communities like Stanthorpe and Warwick, a piece of infrastructure that would have not just increased agricultural production but given water security to the town of Stanthorpe as well has been taken away by a government that is city centric. That tears at the very heart of exactly what it is to be Australian. It shouldn't matter where your postcode is. We've got a housing crisis in regional Australia as well, I've got to say. We're looking for people to come out and do the jobs. For some reason it's taken five budgets for the Albanese government to think that there now is a crisis for young people trying to get into housing. I mean, really? That wasn't an issue 12 months ago? They've only now said that we have to tax housing more to get young people into housing? That was a problem 12 months ago. That was a problem two years ago.”
“They're taking away the water supply from the town of Warwick, where 15,000 people live. We haven't thought about digging some holes and storing some water for when it rains so that these communities can not just survive but prosper. To take another $100 million out of that might sound great. People in metropolitan areas don't have a clue that this has happened. They'll probably wipe their brows and go: 'You know what? It doesn't worry us, because we'll probably get an intersection upgraded.' But what this means is your food security diminishes and your food prices go up. If you do not give primary producers the tools they need, then you produce less and that means you pay more. That is the stark reality of what is happening to regional Australia.”
“When you look at what was ripped out in 2022, they've come back again to take what was left in the cupboard on water infrastructure, with another $100 million taken out of the national water infrastructure fund. This was a fund that we had set up with $7 billion. In fact, in my electorate, a dam at Emu Swamp, near Stanthorpe, was fully funded until the Albanese government came to power and took it away with the Miles government. That is a community, Stanthorpe, of around 8,000 people. It's one of the most productive food bowls in our nation. They are now, already, cutting water again to keep their permanent plantings alive for your apples, your peaches and your plums. They don't have water security. Primary producers are spending thousands of dollars every day on sending water tankers from down the road in Warwick.”
“It's outside Maranoa, but, I grant you, it's an important arterial. But this government has stripped away the 80/20 arrangements they had with state governments. That means that the funding all goes into the capital cities, and regional Australia misses out. It's not just about the productivity of our nation; it's also about our safety. We are driving on roads that are effectively killing people. That's right. That is the stark reality that we live with every day. This is about making sure that there is equity. Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, on election night in 2022, said: 'No-one held back. No-one left behind.' Well, that's unless you live in regional Australia.”
“We are seeing infrastructure being stripped out of regional Australia and put into the Suburban Rail Loop. The Inland Rail—for some reason, the government can't tell us exactly how they got to $45 billion for this project. They won't tell us in any detail where the costs have blown out, but they have decided to pull it up halfway and not go through with this. Even if they were saving $45 billion, there's not a dollar being spent on filling in some potholes on the Warrego Highway, the Cunningham Highway, the Leichhardt Highway, the Landsborough Highway or anywhere across regional Australia. They've been forced into spending a few dollars up and down the Bruce because we made a commitment in the last term about doing an 80/20 split with the Queensland government to fix the Bruce. It does need fixing.”
“On Tuesday night we saw Labor's fifth budget and, let me tell you, they haven't got any better, particularly for regional Australia. You only have to go back to their first one in October 2022, when $27 billion was ripped out of regional infrastructure and put into little chestnuts like the Suburban Rail Loop, which is going to cost over $200 billion and beyond. Infrastructure Australia hasn't even been able to have a look at it or tick it off, but we're going to continue to take infrastructure spending out of regional Australia and throw it all into the Suburban Rail Loop. That's taking away the productivity of this country. If you don't give regional Australia the tools they need, this country gets poorer. That is what we saw, again, in this budget.”
“They need to get affordable insurance so that their homes are protected into the future. I call on the ACCC to look into this quickly.”
“You need to have insurance to be able to get a mortgage, so, in Roma, St George, Charleville and Cunnamulla, young people can't go and get their first home because they can't get insurance because the insurance premium of $43,000 is more than the mortgage payments. We are only seeing it in these communities. There is a discrimination against these communities. What's happened is we have seen a number of these insurance companies move out of the market, so what they are doing is wanting to get out entirely. This is uncompetitive in what they've been able to do, and it is now time for the ACCC to prove that they do have teeth and that they will protect the people of Charleville, Saint George, Cunnamulla, Roma and the elderly who are giving up their insurance premiums.”
“When you look when you look at—and they give you the APRA data to show it—the increase in premiums related to the increase of disasters across Queensland, we are paying exponentially above that despite not having any claims. We have not had any major flood claims in those communities, and the Insurance Council of Australia are running cover for the insurance industry that they represent. It is a shame, and it is now to the point that I have written to the ACCC chair to ask them to investigate this, because we are now seeing that young people cannot go and borrow money to get a mortgage.”
“In fact in Cunnamulla there were levee banks put in place in 1990 that weren't even breached, but they also copped this insurance increase from the insurance industry. So we had 10 years where, after the levees were put in place, the insurance premiums stayed in line with what the rest of Queensland was paying, around $1,500 to $2,000. Now, in the last 18 months, we are seeing premiums handed to people in Charleville, Roma, St George and Cunnamulla. The last one I saw was for $43,139.96. Who can afford to pay that? We have had a number of floods in those communities where those mitigation works have proven to work, and the insurance industry is like a corporate cancer that is preying on these communities for no reason.”
“I rise to bring to the parliament's attention an unfolding disaster in western Queensland. It's one that's been perpetrated by the insurance industry. In 2011 we had significant floods across western Queensland in places like Roma, St George and Charleville, and there was significant damage. The entire towns were inundated with water, and the insurance premiums in those areas went rightfully from around $1,500 or $2,000 up to $25,000 or $30,000, and the insurance companies basically held the local, state and federal government to account to make sure that mitigation works were undertaken to ensure that those premiums came down. By 2015, in Saint George, Charleville and Roma, mitigation works were put in place. Levee banks were put in.”
“In fact, their own budget papers say they're going to reduce housing by 35,000 homes because of this measure alone. What you need to do is use some common sense. What this crowd is going to do is bring in two million people over the two terms of their government. What they could do is reduce migration to reduce demand. That would actually help the supply and buy time for states and local governments to actually build some homes. That wouldn't cost a cent. That just shows that this budget was all about ideology. It's all about having this class warfare—about the haves and have-nots. It wasn't about common sense, and their own budget papers show that every Australian is going to be worse off. The standard of living of every Australian is going to continue to diminish. It's going to diminish to a standard below 2011.”
“Tuesday night was Labor's fifth budget, and they aren't getting any better. It was a budget that treated the Australian people like mugs. They came in and said, 'We want to change negative gearing, and we want to change capital gains tax, because young people can't get into housing.' Well, where were they three years ago? Where were they 12 months ago—before the election—in being honest with the Australian people? Have they only just realised that young people can't get into the housing market? They've only just realised that in the last couple of months? I think the Australian people see them as the mugs and as trying to pull one over them. The reality is you do not need to tax housing. If you tax housing, you get less of it.”
“We get over 60,000 visitors out to the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame, the Qantas Founders Museum, the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton and right back in to the Charleville Cosmos Centre and the Big Rig in Roma. We are already seeing cancellations because they don't have confidence that this government has handled this crisis of fuel properly. They don't believe that they can go out there and get from town to town and be able to spend money in these economies. If we don't have that money, we start to go broke. Then we rely on the weather, and we hope the rain comes and we can continue to produce your food and fibre. This is a stark reality. This is the human toll that we are seeing, from caravan parks in Stanthorpe all the way through to Longreach, which is the trail that many people will start on these Easter holidays.”
“This Easter will be the hardest Easter for Australians in living memory not only because they're paying $27,000 more for their mortgage. Their electricity bills have gone up by 40 per cent and their insurance by 30 per cent. Now we've got a government that said there was no crisis on fuel, but, now they've found one, they're going to make sure that Australians are going to do it even harder over this Easter. Let me make it a little bit more local and give you a human toll. What will happen, not just for those that can't afford to pay their mortgage but for those that were going to go out and visit western Queensland? You see, this is the start of western Queensland's tourist season, because it starts to cool down.”
“Can I firstly thank you, Mr Speaker, for the leadership role you've taken in taking the parliament to youth of Australia and, particularly, to schools. This is testament to a legacy you'll leave as a Speaker of this parliament in making sure that young people are engaged with this parliament. So thank you to you, Mr Speaker, first. I don't think there's been enough acknowledgement of that. To Jett and to his family: you are a credit to your family and to our part of Maranoa. Jett and his family only moved to Maranoa a couple of years ago. To be able to understand how important food is, how it's produced—how farmers produce it and all the costs that they put into it—and then, if it doesn't look perfect, that they get nothing for it when it tastes the same is a great message to come from a young man with a great future.”
“This is the legacy that will be left by a government that didn't heed the advice, was asleep at the wheel and allowed Australia to effectively stop. This is catch-up by a government that's been driven by Newspoll rather than its responsibility to stand up and protect Australians and to understand the importance of regional Australia and the supply chains we provide to every Australian. This is a day of shame for this government. They have finally been shamed into doing something instead of being ahead of the game. That shows we've got a government that doesn't understand this country and doesn't understand regional Australia—and we are all paying the price.”
“I have them in my electorate going to these smaller distributors, picking the eyes out of their market—picking them out of them—and saying to these customers, 'These small distributors can't supply to you anymore, so start writing a contract with us.' That's the abhorrent behaviour that has been created because the government hasn't used the tools nor the powers at their disposal from 28 February on. That is what regional Australians and small family businesses who were in that secondary wholesale market are now facing: predatory behaviour from the big four service stations. That's what they are doing to us out there. It'll all be great for a while. But you know what? They'll get sick of us and they'll go back and they'll retract to the city, and you'll have nothing in regional Australia. This is the price we are going to pay.”
“Instead, when the minister had every tool at his disposal, he knew where every litre of fuel was and I don't think he asked for it on 28 February. I think he thought, so long as it turned up to a city servo, it was all okay, all hunky-dory. Everyone will be calm. Everyone will do okay out of this. But the fuel stopped going into those secondary markets, and you've got a Treasurer that didn't understand what he was asking the ACCC to do. I've written to the Treasurer about this. Let me also say what the ACCC—it's predatory behaviour of the big four fuel companies.”
“This is a big awakening for Australia to make them understand how important regional Australia is, how important our supply chains are and how important it is that, if you get advice, you don't work superficially to only look after people in capital cities. Ultimately, if you don't have us you don't have food and you don't have an economy. That is the stark reality that regional Australians have had to face up to from a government that should have had advice on 28 February, not a couple of weeks down the track. I find it appalling that this government did not act after 28 February, that they did not see this coming at them like a freight train. There is no way in the world that that advice was not given to them.”
“These small family businesses that have had the courage to use their own sweat and their own wallets to have a go, to put trucks out there and to get your food from a paddock to your plate, are now on their knees. They're on their knees. While this is an initiative that we support, it is weeks late. These men and women who are carting your food have been going broke because there hasn't been an understanding of their importance in our country's economy and our supply chains. You in metropolitan Australia have the convenience to turn up to a supermarket knowing that it's just sitting there on a shelf.”
“While we're sitting here and we say we're doing a lot, let me tell you, for three weeks regional Australia has been on fire, because it looks as though this government does not care and has not thought about them in the contingency of a world event that is reshaping the globe but is also reshaping this country. They haven't understood the gravity nor understood the importance of what regional Australia does: how we feed you and how we pay your bills with sending iron ore and coal out on a boat. If we can't get it there, it doesn't happen. This is where there has to be an appreciation, too, of the transport sector—the heavy transport sector. This industry is the essential lifeline keeping this country going. Our trucking industry needs to be protected in this.”
“These are people that rely on this for their wellbeing, not just their livelihoods. You had a government that didn't understand supply chains and didn't understand regional Australia. Quite frankly, it seems as though they didn't care that you have people in regional Australia—a town of 800 people—without fuel. Allora, just down the road from me, is without fuel. Bartranz, a local distributor, was trying to fill up headers for sorghum to be harvested and couldn't get supply. They were turned away from getting any supply at the Port of Brisbane. This is the stark reality of the lived experience of Australians at the moment. This is a government that hasn't understood their responsibility nor the gravity of what has happened.”
“If the ACCC was really over their job and had leant in to make sure they freed up that supply, they would have underwritten, from the very start, the fuel prices—the fuel being bought—so that it could be distributed into regional Australia. That's the lived experience of what's happened when you have farmers without it. But you also have towns without it. I live near Clifton. They've already mandated how much fuel you can take. They've taken us down to 40 litres; 40 litres is all you can take. The next service station is 80 kays down the road at Texas, a town of 800 people. It's 80 kays to the closest town down the road, so you've got to drive 80 kays to get fuel. It's not like the capital cities, where you can drive down to another suburb and you can fill up.”