Presenter Jaynie Seal: The Federal Government says there won't be a need to escalate Australia's fuel security plan to stage three. Speaking in Sydney, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese conceded that while there may be difficult times ahead, the nation's fuel stockpile is actually heading in the right direction. Well, for more. Joining us live is emergency management Minister Kristy McBain. Minister, thank you so much as always. Great to see you. So, that said, sounds positive in the short term. We don't know what's going to happen in the long term in terms of the crisis. But in terms of that knock on effect, how do you see this playing out? Because there's many farmers, for example, small businesses, just to name a couple, that are really concerned with fuel, fertiliser, urea and the like. 

Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories Kristy McBain: Well, good evening, Jaynie. It's great to be with you again. I think the troubling part, not only for the federal government, but for small businesses, for farmers, for fishers, for industries, is that it's really difficult to forecast at the moment what our budgets might look like. It's difficult for industry to forecast what their budgets might look like because we don't know what's going to happen in the Middle East. So, you know, we've been working on a range of plans. You've seen the Prime Minister in Asia securing additional diesel supplies and additional agricultural grade urea to make sure that we can shore up the supplies we already have. You've seen the energy minister going out to secure additional shiploads of fuel, as well as us changing a range of our settings to ensure that more fuel can flow to the regions, including relaxing some of those ACCC guidelines to make sure that companies can talk to each other and get fuel out to where it's missing, particularly in rural and regional Australia. 

Seal: So, if we look at this moving forward, we spoke to Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute a couple of hours ago, Robbie Katter from the Katter Australia Party, different conversations, but a similar theme in terms of, when you see a crisis, and we brought up Covid, for example, and a lot of things were, you know, silver lining, don't really like to use that term, but, you know, the positive things coming out of these major crises, but then life moves on and the momentum stops with certain projects moving ahead. What can we learn from this particular crisis, whether it's being more bipartisan or keeping those new ways of looking at things going? 

McBain: Yeah, I think it's a really good point, Jaynie, you know, the focus of government so often shifts quickly, depending on if there's a natural disaster. You know, we've had, obviously, housing become a big issue post Covid as well so attention can, can change depending on what the Australian people are asking for. After Covid we looked at what we could do to re-engage Australian manufacturing and we established that national reconstruction fund. So, it's been again activated and we can attempt to get more Australian companies looking at doing more things in the country. But it will take the collective focus of not only both parties of government, but different levels of government, too. And I think that's going to be the key, is making sure that National Cabinet continues to work on this as a collective and making sure that we're actually moving forward as a country, rather than trying to score cheap political points when we know Australians are doing it really tough at the moment. You know, it's really silly to engage in that political point scoring when we actually need to come up with solutions and both sides of the political arena really need to come together. 

Seal: So, would that potentially mean, if, you know, Labor's in power and you hold, hold that power, that perhaps things that your, your government has been adamant on not doing, is there the potential to go, okay, we're in a crisis, we are going to move into a different world. We've got AI data centres going to need a lot more water, for example. Do we need to open our minds up a little bit more and really look at things that we've been adamant against in the past?

McBain: I think it means we've got to have some constructive discussions and real debate in the country. Often it gets shut down at the first social media headline or the first attempt for someone to score a political point out of it. So, it's going to require people to have an open mind about a range of things. But, you know, it's really important, I think, that you've got a parliament that comes together and whilst the Labor Party holds a majority in the House, we don't hold a majority in the Senate, we've got to work with other political parties to get legislation through. So it's important to do that in the spirit that is required right now, and that's us working together for all Australians. 

Seal: And moving forward with the potential of El Nino - so, drier and warmer conditions forecast across eastern parts of the country as we head into winter and spring. Our senior meteorologist is forecasting potentially about an 80 to 90% chance of that El Nino forming. But also with the lack of urea and fertiliser and what is lying ahead for our farmers who provide our food. What could you potentially provide for them if they are going to experience drier than average conditions over the next few seasons? 

McBain: Yeah, we know already that North-West NSW and South-West Queensland have been really dry for a period of time. I regularly catch up with Regional Development Australia committees from around the country and get reports from them on what's happening in their own patches. But I've been holding weekly local government roundtables to understand some of the issues that are facing particular communities at this point in time. We've added additional funding, an extra billion dollars to our regional investment corporation to assist farmers with those low interest loans, who are doing it tough. Obviously, there'll be a budget coming up in the next sort of five, six weeks and there might be some additional things in there. I know that the Minister for Agriculture has got a fertiliser supply task force now and she's been meeting regularly with National Farmers Federation and others to discuss some of those pinch points and key concerns that they have as we lead into this next season. So we've been working really collaboratively with a range of different groups to make sure that all of that information is being fed into our budget process. 

Seal: All right, we've got to wrap it up. But just quickly, with the greatest respect, do you think the $20 million campaign, Every Little Bit Helps, because a lot of people are saying that that wasn't the best campaign. 

McBain: Yeah, look, I can understand how people feel when they see dollars like that being spent on ad campaigns. But I think it is important to get as much information to people as possible. Some of that is common sense and people would know, but there are a whole range of things in that, that people potentially don't know. You know, the public transport side of things for some of us who live in rural and regional Australia, we know that that's not a thing that any of us can find that's readily available to us, but if our counterparts in metropolitan Australia can look at doing some of those things, and it leaves more, more fuel, more diesel for us that need to drive long distances in regional Australia. So, in that respect, I think it's a good reminder to our counterparts in the cities to do their bit so that the fuel can get to where it needs to go, and that's across regional and rural Australia. 

Seal: Minister Kristy McBain, thank you so much. Good to be with you