DANIEL HILLIARD: It's your friendly neighbourhood radio Dan on the Early Birds. It's not just you and me that is up this early, it's also Minister Madeleine King, the Minister for North Australia and also, Federal Minister, I should say, and also for fuel, among other things. Welcome to the show, Minister.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Oh, it's great to be here, Dan. And back in Darwin. I haven't been here for a little while, I'm afraid, but it's really great to be back and what a beautiful time of year here at the Top End.

DANIEL HILLIARD: And we're back here on the Early Birds with Minister Madeleine King, the Federal Minister for Resources and North Australia. Sticking around, I really appreciate, Minister.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Oh, a pleasure, Dan. No worries at all.

DANIEL HILLIARD: Can I call you Maddy? We're all early birds.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well we're in the Territory now so that's absolutely fine. No, welcome that.

DANIEL HILLIARD: Oh, it was so weird. Look a little bit more serious thing that's probably been, you've been answering questions left, right and centre about the fuel situation. I get the impression that the Territory is actually in not a terrible position compared to some of the other countries. Is that what we're looking at?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, you're absolutely right. There's an excellent supply chain here in Darwin where the fuel comes straight from Singapore to Darwin and then gets distributed through the whole network throughout the Northern Territory. But that's not to say there still aren't challenges in prices. I mean, I think like where I'm from in Western Australia, remote WA, remote NT, remote Queensland, always has higher prices and when it goes up even a bit more that, that can be pretty stressful. But what has happened is the Federal Labor government has halved the fuel excise and that's fighting those higher prices right around the territory. And what we've seen is that's delivered in Darwin and I just saw this coming in from the airport the other day. You've got unleaded here for under two bucks – this is yesterday, I don't know what it is this morning – and diesel under three.

DANIEL HILLIARD: It's looking like that this morning, too, yeah.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, right. And diesel under three dollars. And I live in metropolitan Perth in the southern suburbs and I could tell you our prices are way over that. So, there's a magic source going on here which is great and I think it's a fuel excise combined with some of the work for the NT Government making sure that those servos keep prices down. So, you know, I'm really proud of what the Labor government's done to bring the ACCC in around, you know, enforcing petrol stations to keep the prices down as well as the fuel excise cut. So, I think it's really good.

DANIEL HILLIARD: Not only that like they've also forced the, open the books with the wartime policy from 1949, the Price Exploitation Prevention Act. When this came through, does this surprise you? Like has any other government, state or territory government looked at anything like this?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Yeah, well I think all state and territory governments are looking at what their laws are and the NT's got this, the fuel, sorry I haven't got the name right but that-

DANIEL HILLIARD: Exploitation Prevention Act.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Exploitation Act which you know is stopping price gouging and, and it's really good that they've activated that. WA's done the same kind of work where they've brought in their Emergency Fuel Act to do exactly the same thing to make the providers of the fuel, you know, open their books and tell us what they're paying and where the fuel's going, where it's being stored. So, governments can you know, work out where it needs to go. Especially for around, you know, agriculture in particular to make sure you know, farmers can keep providing us with food. You know, that's really important. So, you know I think what, what the state and territory governments are doing with the Federal Government around access to fuel, around pricing of fuel is all adding up to Australia being in a really good place, to Territorians being in a good place. But having said that, I do know that prices are higher than what they might normally be, but they're certainly low on what they could have been.

DANIEL HILLIARD: Can you do one thing for me while you're up here please Maddy?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Well, I can try.

DANIEL HILLIARD: Can you tap, can you tap the Territory Government on the shoulder and say hey, you want us to go to MyFuel NT? Can you fix the site please?

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: I heard about it, I heard about it yesterday, [indistinct] say hey we better check because we've driving up and down the highway and we saw the price and said, there must be a website. But you know these things happen from time to time. You know, I'm not going to hack into the government. It must be a worst nightmare for them right now. But I'll let them get on with it and I'll get on with my job as well. I know they're doing their best.

DANIEL HILLIARD: Well speaking of your job, you're over there announcing and confirming the 70 million dollar budget to the student housing for CDU. A low, low interest loan to help those international students. Have a great day, have a great trip and hopefully we'll see you again soon.

MINISTER MADELEINE KING: Thanks Dan. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for taking the time, I really do appreciate it.