Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The previous speaker, the member for Indi, is a lovely lady and we all like her immensely, but I have not heard one substantive thing. If you come into this place, you want to come in after having done a bit of research and homework. On our opponents’ side, this debate on the matter of public importance has been characterised by the homework not having been done.

People say that we cannot produce fuel. Have you ever heard of a country called Brazil? Have you ever heard of a country called the United States? You are saying that we cannot produce it. Brazil is doing it and the United States is doing it. Do not tell me we cannot do it.

As for capacity, we have five million tonnes of sugar. In Far North Queensland alone we are a million tonnes below capacity in the production of sugar, never mind cane. We are probably a million tonnes below production, so we could go to six million. But, even at five million tonnes, we are looking at 600 litres to the tonne. I emphasise to the House that I am not talking about airy-fairy figures; I am giving you the statistics. We produce five million tonnes of raw sugar per year in Australia. It converts at 600 litres per tonne. Everybody knows that. I should not have to explain it to the House or quote my sources on that. That is 3,000 megalitres. Australia used about 20,000 megalitres, last time I looked.

My honourable colleague the member for New England has informed the House that there is 30 million tonnes of grain production. You get 450 litres per tonne from grain. That would be of the order of 13,000 litres. That is 16,000 litres on current sugar and grain production.

Almost half of my electorate—about two or three per cent of Australia—has the water and flat irrigation land, the mid-west plains of Queensland, to turn into sugar production. Queensland is a magnificent, natural sugar producing area. We have the water, we have the land, but we have a problem: the state government in Queensland is not letting us take any water out of the rivers to irrigate this land. It has no trees on it, except for seven million hectares of an introduced species which has run amok and destroyed an area the size of Tasmania. One of the leading Natural Heritage Trust people said that it is the worst environmental holocaust in Australian history. If we were growing product on it, we could control the immense destruction taking place.

I cannot talk about the expansion of the grain industry but, as the sugar industry stands, the mid-west plains could put one million hectares of land under irrigation tomorrow. Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, you of all people know how much sugar that would grow. It could produce double Australia’s current production. We could put in two or three million hectares of sugar if we wanted to. The water is there. The flat land is there. It is being used to run a few moo-cows around in a year in which it rains. We cannot run many moo-cows on it because it does not rain a lot, so the land is not doing much as is except growing introduced species that are wrecking the flora and fauna in that environment. We are talking about one million hectares in an area of 20 to 30 million hectares.

We can produce sugar right at this very moment. People ask, ‘Will you do it?’ The opposition spokesman quite rightly asked us, ‘Are you going to put all of your sugar across to ethanol production?’ Too damn right we will, because all we are getting is $269 a tonne. We watch our Brazilian competitors enjoying a relative figure of about $470 a tonne, because that is the price of petrol reflected back to the farm gate. If they are getting the petrol price reflected back to the farm gate at $470 a tonne, our producers could also get $470 a tonne. Mr Deputy Speaker, you would know that we have been limping along on $269 a tonne for the last five years. It would be Christmas time big time if we converted our sugar into ethanol production.

Why is that not happening? Let us be very technical about price. I hear criticisms, but there are no figures being produced on this anywhere. If we were getting a decent price for sugar at, say, $360 a tonne—which is $100 a tonne more than we have been getting for the last five years—that would translate to 60c a litre. In the documents that I am holding up—which is work done by the Queensland state government and Brazil—both state 600 litres per tonne. If we were to add 9c a litre to 60c for processing costs, that would be 69c a litre. We could give you petrol at the bowser for 69c a litre. If we were to add, say, 6c for transport and storage and 5c for retail, that would come to 80c a litre. Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not want to get too technical here, but you and I both know that one-fifth of our sugar is actually molasses, for which we get paid virtually nothing. If we were to put molasses into the mix, we would be talking about 80c a litre. I know from the figures produced for the grains industry that it can also produce for around 80c a litre. Why are we paying $1.20? Why will the oil companies not put that petrol into the bowsers if it is so cheap?

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