Jade Benham
Member for Mildura
AUSTRALIA’S and indeed Victoria’s and our region’s fuel situation is no longer a distant policy debate between different sides of politics.
In communities like ours, it has become very real, very quickly and a very local pressure point.
When we hear “fuel crisis”, we often think about bowser prices ticking up because of conflict in a faraway land.
But here in Sunraysia and right throughout the Mallee, the impact runs much deeper than that. It flows through an entire chain that keeps our region moving.
Our local fuel distributors have been the first to feel it. They are not faceless corporations like the big oil companies that supply them are.
They are local family businesses, employing locals, sponsoring sporting clubs, schools and events, and keeping towns alive.
When supply tightens or prices spike unpredictably, they carry the burden of increased working capital, and the inability to access the fuel and diesel customers like you have ordered.
That means more money tied up just to keep fuel flowing, often at significant financial risk.
Not to mention, these local families who have been in the petroleum game for a long time, feeling like they are letting an entire community down.
Then there is you. The people on the ground. The retail staff behind the counter, the delivery drivers, the logistics operators. Every disruption adds pressure to their day-to-day work, and uncertainty to their job security. Every increase at the bowsers means an uptick in customer anger and that spills over the counter to innocent staff, often teenagers, just there to do their job.
And of course, our agricultural sector. Being deeply entrenched in our ag sector, my family feels this part of it the most.
We are at our region’s busiest time of year.
Table grape harvest, vintage, almond harvest, and soon for the broadacre producers, sowing will commence – and no one involved in any of this wants the rain that won’t seem to leave us alone.
Farmers don’t have the luxury of pausing when fuel becomes harder to access or more expensive. Seeding, spraying, harvesting, transport, it all depends on reliable fuel supply. All of it.
When that chain is broken, it is not just an inconvenience. It is a threat to productivity, to income, to our local economy, to the mental health of some of our strongest and ultimately to the food supply that our region so proudly contributes to.
This is why I have been raising the alarm.
Last week in Parliament, and the week before that, and the week before that and so on, I spoke up strongly about these concerns.
I make no apology for that. When the realities facing our community are dismissed or downplayed, it is my job to ensure they are heard, clearly and without dilution.
When Victorians feel as though they are being gaslit by a premier who has no idea about the reality on the ground, it is my job to speak up, to stand up, regardless of repercussions and I do not apologise for that either. I will never apologise for sticking up for you and your family.
I do, however, want to thank you for the messages of support that followed. Your backing matters. It reinforces that these are not abstract issues, they are lived experiences across our region.
Advocating for our region is not always quiet work. Nor should it be.
Because when it comes to something as fundamental as fuel security, the stakes are simply too high for silence.
