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

No, Treasury would make more money. One on one now, ethanol is cheaper than petrol. Forget about the tax for now—I will come back to it in a moment. You can deliver to the motorist, at the moment that I am speaking, at 80c a litre. Even if you add 20c for reduced distance, you would still come in at 100c a litre compared with what we are paying for petrol at the present moment.

Why is that not happening? I have been in politics long enough to remember—when I was a very young man—when they lifted the price at the well head in Australia. BHP was producing oil and being paid $3 a barrel, but the world’s spot price was $7 a barrel. If the world price today is $75 a barrel, I will bet London to a brick that the oil companies are producing it—as they were back then in Australia—for less than half that figure. Mostly they own the oil wells.

I do not deny that the marketplace—I am a great advocate of the marketplace—should determine the price. That is fair enough. But we can deliver cheaper fuel to the Australian motorist. This country is different from other countries because it has about 12 million people who do not have any commuter systems to get to work on. If you live in the city, you get subsidised transportation. But we poor beggars in the bush do not. There are also no commuter transportation systems servicing people who live in the outer suburbs of Australia.

I have a map here of the United States, which I will hold up briefly for the House. The blacked-out areas, which cover California, New York and almost all of the mid-west states, including big states like Illinois, are using 10 per cent ethanol. The reason the Americans have moved to this fuel is that they are running out of petrol, and they do not want to be at the mercy of the Middle East and Indonesia.

I also have here an ABARE map which will show members of the House that, over the next five years, Australia will virtually run out of petrol. We will move from 90 per cent self-sufficiency down to about 25 per cent self-sufficiency. The Americans are moving with huge aggression. This map and the map that my worthy colleague the member for New England held up show you clearly that the Americans are moving in this direction with great determination. They are not going to be left to the mercy of other countries, but our nation will be well and truly at their mercy.

Dr Tom Beer says that more people are dying from motor vehicles fumes than from motor vehicle accidents. We should be talking seriously about 50, 60 and 70 per cent ethanol—or about 85 per cent ethanol, as the Brazilians are doing and the Americans intend to do. The United States President has said that 75 per cent of their imports will be converted over to electrical vehicles and to ethanol vehicles. In his State of the Union address, he said that America would not be dependent upon those countries, and they are moving forward with a determination. I conclude by saying that it is revenue neutral. The amount of money the government gets from this industry created in Australia is much greater than the amount of money the country gets at the present moment by sacrificing the excise. (Time expired)

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