The plan also recommended moves to “manage demand” and help conserve fuel. ACCI and its partners did not explicitly call for fuel rationing, as has been urged by One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce, but said “a range of measures” should be considered.
“If required, these should naturally begin with voluntary measures and could progress, if necessary, to more serious interventions commensurate with the requirement to conserve fuel,” the business groups said, noting that some firms were already working to reduce their fuel use and manage the travel of employees.
Various sectors, including aged care, farming, housing and waste management, have already begun calling for government support to combat rising fuel prices. ACCI and its partners said federal and state governments must consider cashflow support, finance availability, emergency assistance, and potentially “measures to retain employees”. Guardian Australia understands some housing groups are already considering whether a Jobkeeper-style wage subsidy model might be needed.
Watt said the government was working on securing more fuel supplies, but warned the crisis would linger for some time.
“We’re all in favour of this being resolved as quickly as it possibly can, but also the thing we’ve got to bear in mind is that even if this conflict was to end tomorrow, there is going to be a long tail,” he told Sky News.
“We’ve seen a number of other fuel-producing facilities in the Middle East destroyed or damaged as a result of this conflict. So, unfortunately, this situation is not going to end any time soon.”
Watt said petrol rationing was not among the government’s immediate plans. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said on Saturday that mandatory measures were not his priority, with the government preferring voluntary measures to manage the fuel issue, such as asking Australians to buy as much fuel as they needed.
Watt said: “We’re pulling a range of levers to make sure that we can get the fuel where it needs to be. And we are asking Australians to be sensible in their choices as well.
“We want to see people continue with their holiday plans. We recognise that there are going to be some families who are going to need to make hard decisions based on their budget. Everyone’s going to be in a different situation there. But as a blanket rule, we don’t want to see people deciding to cancel their holidays because of concerns that they may not be able to get fuel.”
Andrew Hastie, the shadow minister for industry, said Australia should consider expanding domestic oil drilling. On the ABC’s Insiders, he also suggested unconventional means like coal liquefaction to produce liquid fuels, an expensive and dirty process that was not widely used around the world.
“I think we need to do exploration in this country. We need to drill in this country for unconventional oil, shale gas. And we should also talk about using coal,” Hastie said.
Hastie said he believed the United States was losing credibility as its war in Iran continued, and that Australians’ support for the US alliance was also being damaged.
“I think the economic pain is going to be is going to be more acute, and they’re going to question the judgment of the President [Donald Trump] as this drags on,” he said.
“We can be critical of bad strategic decisions, and I think this was a huge miscalculation. Iran has managed to pretty much hold the whole world economy to ransom, and because we’re at the end of the very long supply chain, we’re going to experience pain now.”
