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

I wish to agree with my Independent colleagues and with their enthusiasm. Taking up where the honourable member for New England left off, we have a project in the pipeline, the biofuels project, and it will produce over 1,000 million litres of fuel a year. Australia uses 20,000 million litres of fuel. In relation to his point about health, it is just extraordinary to me that 2,000 people are dying in Sydney and Melbourne that do not have to die. Professor Streeton, the eminent Melbourne surgeon who was the leading witness in the tobacco case in Australia, and Professor Carney from Sydney University have commented. There is information in the Journal of the American Medical Association and I can give the reference to the Minister for Health and Ageing if she wishes. Clearly, there are 2,000 people dying in Sydney and Melbourne that simply do not have to die. If Streeton or Carney were here they would get very angry and very emotional because they would see a government that just could not care less.

The Americans care. They did not pass legislation to get ethanol, help farmers or forestall Middle Eastern oil. The legislation was the air quality control act which was passed after the completion of the California study that indicated that when you had a doubling of your pollution you had a doubling of lung cancer and heart disease. I can give you the reference from the Journal of the American Medical Association, and it was also on the front page of New Scientist magazine. It was an earth-shattering event. Quite obviously, the governments of Australia are so ignorant that they do not even know what is going on in the world, but the Americans did. Except for those from the oil-producing states, every single senator voted for the air quality control act. It simply says that, when the ozone non-attainment level reaches 0.42, you have to oxygenate your petrol so you get a better burn and so people are not going to die from the stuff that gets in your lungs from the emissions.

I do not speak for the grains industry, but on, I think, page 176 of Al Gore’s book, he says there is a 29 per cent reduction. If you get the congressional papers and all of the information papers from the United States congress, every one of them centres around a figure of 28 or 29 per cent. Every single study that was done in the United States and in the world indicates a reduction in CO2 of 28 or 29 per cent when you switch to ethanol. Name me the only country in the world that does not have biofuels legislation. We are in it. The only country that I know of in the entire world that does not have biofuels legislation is us. The European Union has passed a number of resolutions which are binding upon its member states. Canada, the United States, Brazil, China and India are doing it through regulation as we talk. So the answer is there, but the government is going to impose a handicap on all of our industries for no good outcome.

There is another issue which it is vital to consider, and the honourable member for Lyne was here buying time so that this thing can be done properly and objectively. I think that there are commercial pressures upon this government, as there were upon the last government, from the oil companies, Woolworths and Coles and these people who control the bowsers in Australia. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the only interpretation that can be put on it is that interpretation.

I know that in the sugar industry, where we have a much greater benefit than the 29 per cent in the grains industry, we can produce off just one dam, Hells Gate, 1,000 million litres. About 20,000 million litres can be produced from one single dam and a tiny 100,000 hectares. At one stage, Mr Acting Speaker, I had a cattle station that was twice that size. That is a tiny amount of ground, I can tell you. The Mitchell River and the Gilbert River will give you another 3,000. We have over 40 rivers in the gulf; just two of those gulf rivers will give you 3,000 million megalitres. The sugar industry will then convert over, so there will be 8,000 million megalitres without even touching the grains industry. (Time expired)

See this speech in context