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

We have heard an excellent contribution from the member for Batman, but unfortunately in two areas he was factually wrong. We receive $450 a tonne for sugar at the present moment. At current petrol prices that would reflect back to the sugar industry at $480 a tonne. But nobody in the industry believes remotely that we are going to stay at $450 a tonne. For the last five years we have been at $269 a tonne. I usually do my figures at $360 a tonne. We can give you petrol at a much cheaper price than you are getting it at the present moment. I have said repeatedly in this House, as we are screaming and crying about the price of petrol, that we should just bring in a tanker from Brazil. They retail petrol over there at 68c a litre. There is a distance factor involved so the equivalent price might be 75c. They are retailing it at 75c. It seems to be a point that I fail totally to get through. People say that I get passionate and forceful, but I do not know what I have to do to get it through to this parliament that that is the price over there. You can ring the Brazilians and find out. It may go up in sympathy with the world petrol price; in fact I think it probably would. Our sugar has increased in price because the Brazilians have taken a lot of their cane out of sugar production and put it into oil production, which of course is much more lucrative and attractive.

The point here is that the argument that would allow them in here is of no use. We are right now negotiating. There are no independents left in this country. We are informed that, on present trends, within two years 75 per cent of the market will be held by Caltex and Shell, and their partners Woolworths and Coles. The other 25 per cent are little fellas. You cannot set up an ethanol plant on the basis of getting contractual arrangements with 200 or 300 outlets. That is just not the real world. The only plant being built in Australia is being built by one of the major independents—that is the only way you are going to get it—and that major independent has now been bought out by Caltex. The government keeps preaching free enterprise, national competition policy. The Independents have come into this place and repeatedly asked—and ours are the only voices that do this—in which area did we get competition? We most certainly did not get it in petrol. We most certainly did not get it in airlines. We most certainly did not get it in transportation, which is down to about three companies in Australia now: Toll, Linfox and another one. Where exactly did we get this promised competition? In food retailing and supermarkets we are down to just two players with 82 per cent of the market. Back in 1990 they had only 50.5 per cent of the market. So it has failed miserably.

I have great respect for the Prime Minister, but his policy of incentivism and moral suasion with respect to petrol in Australia has failed miserably. The only answer out there, the only clear-cut answer, is what the member for New England and his area and my area can provide to Australia, which is petrol at a price under 80c a litre. We can do that right now, but we have to have somebody to sell it to. I ask members in this House to please understand that the oil companies do not buy at spot market prices. They own the oilwells. They have contractual obligations that date back 30 and 40 years in other cases. When we discussed it with the Venezuelans, they said: ‘Forget about price. Whatever the price is we can undercut it. Don’t worry about the spot market price. That has nothing to do with the price of production.’ It is something that all of us know. In this country we should know it, because when we had the price at the wellhead, it was $3 a barrel and the international spot price was $7 a barrel. There is no relationship between the price the oil companies buy at and what the world spot market price is. They are entitled, under the free market system—and I agree with that—to take the market price out there, but they are not entitled to close down the industry and not allow ethanol in.

See this speech in context