A national dashboard for fuel prices and outages, free nationwide public transport and a co-ordinated approach to curbing demand are among the issues a crisis meeting of leaders is being urged to consider.
National cabinet will meet on Monday to discuss the Middle East fuel crunch for a second time.
State and territory leaders and business groups have called for a national approach to plot a path through the crisis as petrol prices surge and hundreds of service stations run dry.
Australia’s fuel stocks remain at normal levels, but fears of future shortages and price spikes caused by the ongoing blockage of the Strait of Hormuz have spurred users to bulk-buy petrol and diesel, leading to localised shortfalls.
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli accused the federal government of withholding information from the Australian people.
“I won’t stand for Australians not getting the information they need,” he said in a speech on Sunday.
“We’re asking Canberra to release information about prices and outages at a specific time each day, for every state and territory: a national dashboard.”
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said a nationally consistent approach to the crisis was needed.
“We don’t want to head back into that situation that we had a couple of years ago in COVID, where Queensland was doing one thing, NSW had a different approach, Western Australia cut itself off from the rest of the economy, the Victorian economy was locked down for over a year,” he said.
The chamber called for the government to encourage measures to reduce demand for fuel, including supporting greater flexibility to work from home and boosting public transport usage.
Victoria and Tasmania have announced temporary fare waivers for public transport users, which prompted the Greens to urge the Commonwealth to help fund other states to make their networks free.
“Free public transport must be on the agenda at tomorrow’s national cabinet meeting,” Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.
On Monday, the Greens will look to ramp up the pressure on the government to increase taxes on gas exporters set to make windfall profits from the Middle East conflict, with a motion to set up a parliamentary inquiry into the proposal.
The cross bench has been pushing for a 25 per cent tax on gas exports for weeks.
Opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie broke ranks with his Liberal colleagues on Sunday, saying he was open-minded about a windfall profits tax.