Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House notes that the Member for Kennedy and the Member for Clark call on the Government to provide for sovereign fuel security in Australia during the transition to reliance on renewable energy and net-zero carbon emissions, including by ensuring:

(1) a ban on Australian oil exports;

(2) Australian processing, by Australian owned and operated companies, of Australian oil;

(3) Australian petroleum contains a minimum of 33 per cent renewables (algae and ethanol inter alia), by 2027;

(4) Australian manufacture, by Australian owned and operated companies, of drop-in fuel using waste materials, with a targeted supply of a minimum of 33 per cent of the Australian fuel diesel market by 2027;

(5) Australia stockpile a minimum of six months supply of fuels, oils and lubricants, noting that:

(a) these materials are manufactured in Australia from Australian oil; and

(b) where this is not possible, that imports be restricted to those materials genuinely unable to be manufactured in Australia from Australian oil;

(6) any investment in industrial facilities to meet the requirements of this motion be limited to the genuine need for fuel security, with the object that Australian manufacturers achieve 100 per cent energy supply from renewable energy and net-zero carbon emissions; and

(7) Australian manufacture of electric vehicles, and their component parts including battery production, with a target of 100 per cent of all local, state and federal, government vehicles and buses, in metropolitan areas being Australian made by 2035.

For those who don't know—and I hope everyone does know—China and Russia have been meeting. All China wants is Taiwan, and all Russia wants is the Ukraine. We've heard it all before, haven't we? 'All I want is the Sudetenland.' Then: 'All I want is Czechoslovakia.' Then: 'All I want is Poland.' And then: 'All I want is Russia.' So it is a terrible time which we're getting into.

Now, you talk about defence. Honestly, members of the ALP and the LNP in this place should hang their heads in shame. You have two days of fuel supplies. When we kicked up a hell of a stink about the fuel supplies, there were emergency supply tankers put in America—on the other side of the globe.

What we've moved is a motion for a ban on the export of oil. There could be nothing more illogical and stupid than to allow 27 per cent of our requirements in diesel and petrol to go overseas, which we then buy back. It goes overseas to Singapore and to South Korea. If China places an embargo—'Oh, they wouldn't do that!' Well, talk to the Germans in World War I, when Winston Churchill made sure the Anglos had control of every drop of oil on earth. The Germans decided they wouldn't be a third-rate power and they went to war. As to World War II, we all know what forced Japan into the war—an oil embargo. As a young man—I think I was 21 years of age—I joined up because we were at war with Indonesia. Over what? Borneo oil. But this government has no supply of oil whatsoever in the country. They can't use their own Australian oil because it can't be processed in our refineries, except for about three per cent of it. So if China embargoes our fuel, the whole thing becomes a mockery. There is no way that you can move one single soldier from that point to that point. So we're moving this bill. We're not talking about it; we're doing something about it.

As to reducing CO2—well, quite frankly, I think the things that have been done in Australia are a farce. I've always been one for reducing CO2. But if you convert waste to diesel, that's 33 per cent of your oil needs. And they're already doing it: Southern Oil are already doing it in Wagga Wagga and Gladstone. It's not pie in the sky. The Prime Minister has visited; the Premier of Queensland has visited. So they're already doing it. The Germans did it for the last two years of the war—waste to diesel; pyrolysis—by the Fischer-Tropsch method.

Our manufacturing industries are gone in this country. Well, let's get them back. And I defy the ALP or LNP to tell me one single thing that they have done to get those industries back.

Now, what we are proposing is that all government vehicles in metropolitan areas be electric; that would extend our fuel supply but also would mean that we're not dependent upon the fuel supply for at least three or four per cent of our vehicles. They are to be made in Australia by an Australian-owned company. Now wouldn't that be something! Wouldn't that be something, if we were actually constructing motor vehicles in Australia again! Did we make good motor cars? Seventy-two per cent of the market was held by Australia.

Finally, as to renewables: algae is the really big special thing here, and Israel is mapping out the way forward. As to renewables, of course, no less a person than Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth said that the first answer to the world's CO2 problems is ethanol. So why aren't you doing something about it? I mean, you people sit in this place—you're the government! And you were the government—the ALP was the government.

Mr Wilkie is seconding this motion. I was on a 24-hour hour call-up to go and fight in Indonesia. He actually was in the Army when they saw combat. So, both of us, from our backgrounds, feel it imperative to do something. We feel it imperative to do something serious and practical.

I'm not going to go into why the present methods we're using to cut down CO2 are totally impractical and totally illogical, but no less a person than Al Gore has put up solutions. On fuel: we are at 28 per cent, whereas, in America, they're almost totally self-reliant now as to fuel. They are sick of fighting wars. You had World War I; you had World War II; you had the Indonesian war; you had the Arab wars, which just seemed to go on forever; you had the Gulf War and the Afghanistan war. Let's stop fighting the wars and supply our own petrol so that we don't have to fight the wars, and, if we get into one, we can defend ourselves. (Time expired)

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