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

I understand the debate we are having today is on water and climate change. The most prominent person in the world at present on the issue of climate change is undoubtedly Al Gore, who is making the greatest noise on this issue. I have just completed an ethanol tour of the Americas. In Canada, the United States and Brazil, his name is everywhere; his position is ubiquitous. So let us look for a moment at Mr Gore and what he is saying. In his book An Inconvenient Truth, the first solution that he puts up is ethanol. When I entered America the hotel I was staying in had the latest addition of Newsweek magazine. It purports to be a little bit more intellectual than Time magazine in the United States, but the two magazines are like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. On the first page of solutions, the first item listed is ethanol.

President Bush gave his State of the Union speech last year and again this year. What did he talk about in his State of the Union message? Last year, a big part of his speech was on ethanol, and this year again a big part of his speech was on ethanol. We do not have to race around and beat our breasts and throw ourselves on the floor—we know what the answer is. I cannot speak with authority on ethanol from grain. Mr Gore, in his book, says that there is a 27 per cent reduction in CO if you use ethanol.

We have had a dreadful situation—we have had all this water in North Queensland. I think that the government is slowly coming to the realisation that we cannot hold on to this wonderful land that God has given us if it is empty and we are not using it. We say to other countries, ‘We’re not going to use it but you’re not going to be allowed to use it.’ Who would think that it was a fair thing for our nearest neighbour, which has 80 million of their 200 million population going to bed hungry every night? Who would say that that was a fair thing? What American mother would say: ‘I should sacrifice my son for these people who never settled this land’? They did not use it; it was just a wasteland that was not being used.’

You can fly from Cairns to Broome, as I have done on a number of occasions, and you will see no sign of human habitation—and yet you have flown over three-quarters of the nation’s water resources. It is all in the north, where we have 300 million megalitres; the rest of Australia has 100 million megalitres. The Murray-Darling, where we are trying to do all of Australia’s farming, has only 22 million megalitres.

What the hell are we doing? There are 300 million megalitres of water up in the Gulf country and in the north-west of Australia—in the Ord, the Daly and the Fitzroy. Why aren’t we touching these areas? There is a tiny little dot in the Ord; that is all we are using.

All of the great people in this nation—including Edward Theodore and John McEwen, whose photos are up on my wall—have said that this nation will not survive unless we settle these areas. Quite frankly, if you take out the golden boomerang, and a little dot around Perth and Darwin, there is no-one living in that country. The population of 85 per cent of the continent is 680,000. There is nobody there. The Australian government and the Australian people should read anything these great men—these thinkers, these great dominant forces in Australia—said.

Australia is unique in the advanced farming countries of the world. We are the only country not looking at ethanol. Canada announced when I was there that they were compulsorily moving to five per cent ethanol. Every single bowser in Canada will have a minimum of five per cent. A lot of people who know what they are talking about in this place already know that in the United States five per cent of fuel is ethanol. It is five per cent by law, but the way the laws work out mean is that it is 10 per cent in most states.

The United States President is no friend of Al Gore’s and Al Gore is no friend of his, but both sides of the political debate in the United States have no doubt which way we should be going. The President of the United States said that 75 per cent of our oil imports from the Middle East will be replaced by hydrogen and electric.

What is the cheapest way to get hydrogen? The cheapest way to get hydrogen is from ethanol. But I think that is far away, and even the President would agree that that is far away. Electricity has a part to play—electric cars in the middle of the cities—but once you get to the outer suburbs it has no role to play.

So effectively the President is saying that 75 per cent of our Middle Eastern oil will be replaced by ethanol coming from corn, but also from cellulose. Dadini assert absolutely that their plant is working commercially and successfully converting fibre material—grass, sawdust, bagasse from cane; all of those things—into ethanol now. It has some bugs; it is not for sale at this stage but over the next two or three years you will be able to go and buy a plant off the shelf, and at any plant they will convert your sawdust into ethanol to put into your motorcar.

I think the House should look at some of the figures. I plead with those in the House to look at some of the figures, if you are serious about CO. I am one of the sceptics on global warming that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition was talking about. I have read Al Gore’s book from cover to cover five times, and I have read all of the material that I can lay my hands on—including Tim Flannery’s book here in Australia—and material from the other side, and there is no doubt that there is a massive increase in CO, in my opinion as a result of human intervention.

One of the most eminent scientists in this country, Dr Joe Baker—the founder of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and short-listed for a Nobel Prize—says that, on the evidence, the ocean may well be cooling, not warming. But even if you read Gore’s book you will find that it is very equivocal on the evidence. It is very equivocal but I think all of us agree that there is a massive increase in CO and that we should be addressing the problem.

How do you address the problem? I was mines and energy minister in Queensland but I had responsibilities in that area well before I was minister. We were moving to put all of the government houses—government had 27 per cent of the houses in Queensland at the time—under solar hot water. Forty per cent of domestic usage is the heating of water, so you cut 30 to 40 per cent of electricity demand immediately—and that solution is available to us at the moment.

But in the transport regime nobody in the world is seriously talking about 10 per cent any more; they are talking about replacing oil—the more expensive, more carcinogenic fuel and the more politically difficult fuel because it is causing wars in the world—with ethanol. Ours is the only government that is not doing this. In the Americas there are 600 million people now driving their cars on ethanol, but here in Australia we still have not moved on this.

I look at the vast water resources. We have had problems in the last 10 years because in agriculture there is nothing we can compete on. Clearly, all of the other countries are subsidising their agriculture. The OECD average subsidy is 49 per cent. How can we compete? We have no subsidies and no tariff protection; how can we compete against countries that have an average subsidy of 49 per cent—though some of them are above average?

So what I am saying to the House is that the answers are there in ethanol. In Northern Australia you have the landmass, you have the water and you have the sunshine. As Australians, God has been good to us. We have been given those resources and those resources are massively deteriorating. We have a dreadful natural cycle of erosion; it has nothing to do with man. We have a natural cycle of erosion in Northern Australia and I do not have time now to talk about that. To quote the deputy head of the NHT, the greatest environmental holocaust in Australian history is the prickly acacia tree, which has wiped out six million hectares of native flora and fauna in the last 20 to 30 years. But, if we control our river banks and look after them and put irrigated pasture on them to protect them and stop those weeds getting away, we will be husbanding the resources of Australia.

In conclusion, there are 134 million megalitres of water just in the gulf alone. If we take just seven per cent of that water and apply it to the land, it will irrigate five per cent of the 40 million hectares which exist in the Gulf of Carpentaria. This five per cent of landmass is two million hectares, and this will meet all of Australia’s petrol needs forever. (Time expired)

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