Brad

5 years ago, do you think I was right? The Senate on 22 June 2021. Senator HANSON (Queensland—Leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation) (13:07): I rise to speak on the Fuel Security Bill 2021. When I came into the Senate in 2016 I raised the importance of fuel security for all Australians. This and previous governments have continually failed to meet the internationally mandated 90 days stockpile of fuel for the people of this nation. That means this government has put at risk the fuel security of our daily transport needs: our defence, our aviation industry, our mining and our commuter needs. Without this internationally mandated 90-day stockpile of fuel, Australia risks coming to a grinding halt. My concerns were echoed by Senator Jim Molan when he entered the parliament in December 2017. What has happened over the last five years? Nothing. If we go back to the year 2000, Australia had eight refineries that literally met the entire needs of our domestic refined fuel requirements. That is the same year Australia was manufacturing more than 320,000 new cars and over 23,000 commercial vehicles. Fast forward two decades, and Australia's self-sufficiency in the fuel space is going the same way as manufacturing. It's almost dead. Shamefully, in the space of four months, Australian oil refineries in Altona, owned by ExxonMobil, and Kwinana, owned by BP, announced they were closing half of this nation's remaining oil refineries. They suggested the facilities were no longer economically viable. How is that possible? When I looked at the consolidated income statements of each of these oil companies operating in Australia, I saw that each of them is pulling in tens of billions of dollars of revenue each year from Australians. They drill the oil and gas. They send the bulk of it overseas to Asian markets that have cheap labour. Then we're forced to buy it back from foreign markets, where the oil companies have extracted the bulk of the jobs and profits that should belong to Australians. Successive governments have squandered the opportunity to negotiate better deals for Australians off the back of these highly sought-after resources. And here we are today expected to pass legislation that will pay these same multinational oil companies $2.3 billion of taxpayers' money to continue refining activities until 2027 and, if we're lucky, until 2030. Well, I've got some bad news for this government: I'm not going to help pass a bill that takes us down the same path as the car industry, which received billions and billions of taxpayers' money only to close. I make no apologies for looking out for the best interests of Australian taxpayers. If we're going to pay $2.3 billion to secure Australia's fuel supply, the government should buy the Brisbane refinery in Lytton and let it become an asset owned by the Commonwealth. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper, and this government could then claim it has secured our refining capabilities well beyond 2030. John F Kennedy was famous for saying: 'Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.' The truth is this government fears proper negotiations, because multinational companies have walked all over Scott Morrison, just as they did with Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. I'll say it again: these overseas corporations come here, they drill and mine our resources, and then they pay little to no taxes. Paying oil refineries $2.3 billion to keep operating in this country is hardly in Australia's best interests. We don't get a single share in these facilities. Instead we hand over the cash and simply kiss it goodbye. Again I remind Labor and the Liberal and National parties what happened to Australia's car industry after they had been given tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. They took the cash and buggered off when it suited them. (1/3)