In March 2026, Australians woke up to fuel shortages, panic buying, empty pumps in regional towns, and petrol prices surging nearly 50 cents a litre in a matter of weeks. This is not a surprise. This is the inevitable result of decades of wilful neglect by successive governments — and the bill is now due.

We are calling on the Australian Government and Queensland State Government to cancel the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games, and redirect all committed taxpayer funds toward fixing Australia's fuel security crisis.

 
A Decade of Ignored Warnings on Fuel Security

Australia has been a member of the International Energy Agency (IEA) for 45 years. The IEA requires all member nations to hold a minimum 90-day fuel reserve. Australia has not met this obligation since 2012 — making us the only IEA member in non-compliance.

This is not new information. Governments on both sides have been warned, repeatedly, by experts, committees, and our own defence establishment:

2014 — National security expert John Blackburn raised the alarm in an NRMA report, warning of Australia's dangerously low fuel reserves and vulnerability to supply chain disruption.
April 2018 — Former Major General Jim Molan published a stark warning in The Australian, describing the perilous state of Australia's fuel holdings.
2019 — Rather than build genuine reserves, the government began counting fuel being loaded onto ships in overseas ports and fuel still at sea as "Australian stock" — in direct violation of IEA rules which state that fuel "on the water" does not count.
2021 — The Fuel Security Act was passed, but its Minimum Stockholding Obligation (MSO) still relied on counting fuel within Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone (200 nautical miles offshore) — another accounting trick, not a real solution.
2023 — The Albanese Government's MSO came into force, abandoning the pretence of counting overseas-loaded fuel, but replacing it with pipelines and unrefined oil — once again falling short of genuine in-country reserves.
March 2024 — News Weekly highlighted the MSO as a deliberate workaround to avoid meeting the IEA's 90-day obligation.
March 2026 — With the Strait of Hormuz disrupted by the US-Israel-Iran conflict, Energy Minister Chris Bowen confirmed to Parliament that Australia held just 34 days of diesel, 32 days of jet fuel and 36 days of petrol. While IEA members hold an average of 141 days, Australia scraped in at the very bottom. The goal, quietly downgraded from 90 days to 50 days, was barely being met in name only.
Experts at IEEFA described Australia as holding "the lowest level of oil stocks of all IEA members." Defence analysts called the situation "absolutely pathetic." Opposition Leader Angus Taylor repeatedly challenged the government at Question Time, stating: "Labor's mismanagement of fuel security and the economy is driving up inflation and hitting Australians' cost of living hard."

Australia imports roughly 90% of its refined fuel. We once had eight oil refineries. We now have two — Ampol's Lytton in Brisbane and Viva Energy's Geelong facility — which together supply less than 20% of demand.

This crisis was not caused by the war in the Middle East. The war simply exposed what was already broken.

 
The Olympic Finances Don't Stack Up — And Never Did
Before a single athlete arrives in Brisbane, the financial reality of the 2032 Games is already alarming:

The committed state and federal government venue budget is $7.1 billion, split 50/50.
The operating budget alone is $4.9 billion — agreed during the bid in 2021 and already acknowledged by Brisbane 2032 Chairman Andrew Liveris as insufficient to cover the expanded footprint of nine event sites across Queensland (Rockhampton, Cairns, Townsville, Maryborough, Toowoomba, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and Brisbane).
In February 2026, Liveris told 145 IOC members in Milan that the budget "would need to be revised" — without providing a revised figure.
Hidden costs continue to emerge. Queensland Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie alleged that the prior Labor government concealed a $500 million train transport link tied to the Brisbane Arena, plus $181 million for two other venues.
Academic research is unambiguous: every Olympic Games has exceeded its budget. Paris 2024 ran a cost overrun of 115%. Los Angeles 2028 revised its forecast upward from US$5.3 billion to US$6.8 billion before a single venue was built. Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, a leading expert on megaprojects, has identified the Olympics as having the second-highest cost overrun of any class of megaproject — behind only nuclear storage.

And that was before the fuel crisis.

The ongoing disruption to global oil supply chains means that every cost projection for the 2032 Games is now fiction. Construction costs, transport logistics, energy supply for venues, and materials shipping — all are now subject to severe fuel-driven inflation. Brisbane is already identified as Australia's number one construction cost escalation hotspot, and that was before the Iran conflict sent diesel prices surging 67% at the wholesale level.

No budget written before March 2026 can be considered reliable. Queenslanders will be left holding a bill that no one can honestly estimate — and that no one will be held accountable for.

 
Queensland Cannot Afford the Olympics — It Needs Houses and Workers

The timing of the 2032 Games could not be worse for the people of Queensland.

The housing crisis is acute. Rental markets are at record tightness. Home ownership is increasingly out of reach. The national target of 1.2 million new homes over five years requires approximately 60,000 completions per quarter — a figure current delivery trends are "materially short of," according to industry data. Queensland's housing pipeline is under severe strain.

The skilled labour shortage is a national emergency. Construction Skills Queensland's Horizon 2032 report projects a peak shortfall of 50,000 construction workers in 2026–27. Queensland alone is forecast to be short over 67,000 construction workers by 2027. The fill-rate for technicians and trades workers nationally is just 57% — meaning nearly half of all advertised roles go unfilled.

The Olympic construction pipeline is directly competing for the same workers needed to build homes. Brisbane is already described by industry leaders as experiencing a "Hunger Games" competition for subcontractors. Olympic venues, transport links, athlete villages, and a proposed $3.8 billion stadium are absorbing labour that should be building homes for Queenslanders.

Major construction projects already competing for the same pool of workers include: a $19 billion hospital expansion, major renewable energy and transmission infrastructure, and the Cross River Rail. Adding the full weight of Olympic construction into this environment will ensure Queensland's housing crisis deepens — not resolves.

You cannot fix a housing crisis and run an Olympics at the same time with the same workforce. The evidence is clear, and the industry is sounding the alarm.

 
What We're Asking For

We call on the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli, and the federal Parliament to:

1. Cancel the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games and negotiate an exit from hosting obligations with the IOC.
2. Redirect all committed government funds — state, federal, and infrastructure — toward building genuine domestic fuel reserves that comply with the IEA's 90-day requirement.
3. Invest in sovereign fuel security: expand domestic refining capacity, build strategic storage infrastructure, and establish enforceable in-country stockholding obligations.
4. Prioritise Queensland's housing crisis by deploying freed construction capacity and funding directly into the social and affordable housing pipeline.

Australia cannot afford a prestige event while its fuel security is broken, its families can't find affordable housing, and its tradespeople are being pulled away from the work that actually matters.

Sign this petition. Share it. Make them listen.