Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to support the Primary Industries and Energy Research and Development Amendment Bill 2007. I was very interested to hear previous speakers talking about the various research and development opportunities that Australia has. I was quite interested to hear the member for Gwydir’s contribution about his intensive visit to the United States looking at ethanol plants. I was a little disappointed to hear him say that American technology is a little outdated, but I think he was referring to the energy life cycle arrangements.

Having been to the States myself last year, I would agree with him that some of the early plants may be outdated, but there has been a lot more progress made in the more modern plants with the energy in and energy out. Obviously if plants are built in Australia they would be of the new generation, positive energy type that the member for Gwydir alluded to. What he did not allude to, and what I think is important in this debate, is that the main driver of biofuels and renewable energy in the United States has been government policy. Australia is sadly lacking in government policy. The member for Corio raised declining global research in his contribution. The member for Gwydir countered that by saying that in the States there are a lot of commercial investments—and he referred to a number of very wealthy people that are investing in private and commercial research. I saw that in the States as well, and I think it is a very positive thing.

But the reason it is not happening here is that we do not have an adequate policy mix that addresses or invites research into renewable fuels. In fact, we have quite the opposite. We have a rather ridiculous MRET, as they call it: a renewable energy target that was put in place in 2000 to achieve 360 million litres of biofuel by 2010. We are currently running at a rate of, I think, about 47 million litres, and we are into our seventh year. We have a rather ridiculous situation in that we have a policy platform which means that, when 2011 arrives, those who invest in renewable energy biofuels in Australia will be seen as a source of tax—they will be taxed for producing a renewable energy. This is a policy mix that has to be changed. We do not have a mandate. The member for Gwydir failed to mention that the main driver in the United States was that, some years back now, some of the states decided to mandate the usage of certain percentages of biofuels in their fuel mixes for health reasons—emissions in their cities and carcinogenic additives in some of the octane boosters put into the fuels. We do not have that leadership in this country. We have a Prime Minister who occasionally has a cup of tea with the major oil industry bosses, and they say to him, ‘Leave it to us; we’ll do something.’ The last cup of tea was about 18 months ago, and not one contract has been signed—not one off-take arrangement signed—in Australia since. A lot of companies are saying that they are looking at doing things, but not one contract has been signed for off-take arrangements with the major distributors. Why do we need that? We need that because they are the ones who control the bowsers in this nation; they control the distribution network.

So, in terms of research and development and investment in commercial activities in this country, we do not have a policy at all. We are quite prepared to mandate the usage of Opal fuel to stop Aboriginals in Central Australia from sniffing, we are quite prepared to mandate lead level usage as a fuel standard for health reasons and we are quite prepared to reduce the amount of sulfur in diesel for health reasons, but we are not prepared to tell the fuel companies to start using a certain proportion of biofuel in their fuel mixes for a whole range of reasons—health, environmental, global emissions, regional development, localised investment and to shortcut the corrupt world grain market activities we have seen in recent years. We are not prepared to do that by policy at all. The message that comes from the current government—and I am not persuaded that this government is any different from the opposition—is that the market will provide for those sorts of activities. The biggest market-driven economy in the world, the United States—

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