Shadow Minister for Regional Health, Shadow Minister for Regional Communications - Member for Mallee - Transcript - Sky News - Chris Kenny - Wednesday 23 April 2026

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‍DR ANNE WEBSTER MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR REGIONAL HEALTH

SHADOW MINISTER FOR REGIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR MALLEE

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Kenny

I want to go now to the shadow Regional Health Minister, Anne Webster. She joins us, live from Mildura. Good to talk to you again, Anne, I want to get your thoughts on the Prime Minister's national cabinet, on the fuel crisis again today, and him boasting about rustling up an extra three days' diesel supply to arrive here in about six weeks. What do you make of all this? There seems to be a flurry of pretending to be acting when there's not much happening from government at all, except, of course, the excise cut.

Webster

Thanks, Chris. I really appreciate being on I think that the Prime Minister is clutching at straws. We know that Labor are very good at the marketing, you know, if they're going to do anything, every time I think about Albanese, I think about, you know, the nursery rhyme where the boy put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and thought, What a good boy am I? I mean, honestly, that's about the standard three days of fuel, and we should apparently all be applauding his efforts. I don't know how much jet fuel he used while he was flying around Asia trying to shore up those contracts, which some countries made very clear, would be dependent on their own domestic needs. Well, the longer this goes on, the more at risk our supply is. And frankly, I don't think Australians are being taken in, and there are plenty of industries that are really struggling now with fuel costs,

Kenny

Especially in the regional areas. As we've discussed before. Just on that, though, the prime minister says they're looking at perhaps some government assistance to get another refinery built in this country. Is this a pipe dream? We've had about eight of them closed. Could we actually see a new refinery built here?

Webster

I hope so. I absolutely hope so. It's what we need. We also need to drill for oil and we also need to drill for more gas. The problem is that the Prime Minister and his energy minister is absolutely focused on their green dream and their ideology and their commitment to see prices come down in electricity by going all renewable. We know that is not working. We also know that there is a huge pushback in the bush, certainly in my electorate. I've got farmers at their farm gates today blocking VicGrid from being able to come onto their property rights are being eroded. Can an oil ... can a fuel refinery survive? Well, I think there are several things in the mix here. One is the labour market. Our cost of labour is hugely high. No comment about that. We made that decision many decades ago, but it is a factor. Energy costs are huge, and we're not drilling our own oil to a point where you would say that refineries could expect to punch out, you know, millions and millions of barrels of oil - sorry, fuel

Kenny  

I noticed that the Prime Minister talking about diversifying our supplies of fuels today, and he mentioned a number of countries. He didn't mention Australia. Australia would be the best country for us to get our oil, and we were once still sufficient in oil. We could be again. And maybe that's the sort of forward thinking policy we need, where we drill for our own oil and make sure that it is refined in Australia. Then we have some of that sovereign security that everybody talks about but nobody acts on. I want to go back to what you were saying about renewable energy, and the focus on that, it's coming to extra focus for people who don't normally hear about that this week, because of the channel Seven spotlight program looking at the sorts of issues that we look at in this program all the time. So it's great to see that attention, but was a worry today to see Chris Bowen, again, the Climate and Energy Minister, boasting about how much more renewable energy is coming in is going to be built out in coming years. Have a look.

Bowen

The fact that we now have 67.3 gigawatts of new renewable energy investment in our pipeline, which compares to the 73 gigawatts that exist. That's the scale of the pipeline that is being built across the country, with more early stage proposals in the AEMO pipeline, and more gigawatts having hit the grid, actually being connected in the last quarter.

Kenny

Anne Webster, this is a sobering thought, because when you think about all the land being cleared now, all the fights with land over transmission lines and offshore wind turbines and solar farms and the like. Whatever you see is happening now. He's saying that we're going to double that with the next round of investments. So these fights are just going to go on all over the country.

Webster

Look, I think Australians are so angry right now out in the regions we’re sick to death of being treated as second class citizens. Farmers are sick and tired of their rights being eroded, particularly by the Victorian State Labor government. They are absolutely over it. And then we've got a government, you know, an energy minister who is tone deaf. I mean, if he watched Liam Bartlett's Spotlight program the other night, perhaps he has a moral bone in his body that makes him think twice about the imports from China that we are gleefully bringing in. It's really distressing to see the the blindness, the deafness, the I don't care, and and as for the Greens, I mean, it was, you know, heartening to see Bob Brown actually say this is bad. This, this whole process, the green energy process, is bad for Australia and it's bad for our environment. Well, thankfully, somebody is stepping up from that side of politics and saying the truth. Australians know it, we're not fools, and it would be just fabulous if the Labor government stopped treating Australians as fools.

Kenny

Spot on. Anne, thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Anne Webster, there Nationals MP in Mildura joining us live.

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