Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

Anyone who holds out anything different is talking pie in the sky. The member for New England has been peddling this as an election issue. I put it to him that, if he wanted to have a real input into the debate, he should be part of the government. You are certainly not part of the debate when you are sitting on the outside looking in. You need to look at this very closely. The government has set targets and they are being reached. There are incentives in place for the production of ethanol or other production that might be necessary. To simply put forward the glib suggestion that you can mandate and all our problems will be over, that you can set up an ethanol industry and it will solve all the problems of the farming community and that you can add ethanol or methanol to fuel and it will reduce the price of fuel is absolute bunkum—and we need to get that very clearly established.

Undoubtedly, alternative energies have a role to play. I agree very clearly with Wilson Tuckey, who says hydrogen is the future of the fuel industry. There is no doubt about that, and there are some breakthroughs we need to get in that area. I would be very keen to see some extra money put aside for research to help the CSIRO in this area. As far as alternative energies coming from ethanol, methanol or biodiesel are concerned, that is just not going to happen. It will put pressure on other areas. The member for New England skated over the fact that industries in Australia, particularly the feedlot industry, are concerned about the price of grain—and they should be concerned about the price of grain if most of it is diverted to methanol. You only have to look at the price of sugar. Everyone in this House has been saying that the sugar industry in Australia would be dead in two years if the price of sugar is down at 5.5c and 6c. As a long-term member of the sugar industry, I can tell you that the Australian sugar industry might be efficient but it cannot produce at that price.

The only reason that can be seen for a sudden change in 12 months is the escalating price of oil. Why? Because there has been more sugar converted to ethanol in countries like Brazil, India and Thailand, where they have different structures and different production subsidies in place. That has taken sugar off the market, and the price has gone up. Exactly the same thing will happen to grain. So this is not the panacea that is going to solve all our problems. We have to look very closely at these industries, but we also have to look closely at what we are going to do in the long term.

In recent times the Americans have made the bold statement that they think they will have developed a hydrogen cell within 10 years. We can only hope that they are right because it is about the only possible way you could claim to have an alternative energy source. It is certainly not going to come from methanol, ethanol or biodiesel. They may augment other industries—that is yet to be seen—but they certainly will not overcome the problems with pricing or the problems in rural Australia.

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