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

I was pleased but a little bit disappointed in some ways to listen to the Prime Minister’s ministerial statement in terms of energy initiatives. I would like to make a number of comments in relation to some of the things that the Prime Minister put forward.

Obviously—and I think most people would agree—the LPG announcement that the government made is positive to a much smaller degree than the government is hoping it will be. Some people may feel a little bit cynical in relation to its introduction, particularly at a time of very high oil prices. In a sense, the government is looking for a detour in the debate, hence the introduction of the LPG arrangements. I think there will be a small uptake and that, for a number of reasons, it will be much smaller than that which the government is budgeting on.

I know that members of the chamber would be aware that liquid petroleum gas in a few years time will move into an area where it is taxed, whereas in the past it has not been taxed. One of the underlying problems with the whole energy debate and the debate that we are having now on energy initiatives is the fact that we are taxing energy in this country. When I was an economics student, and since, in business et cetera, I always believed and had been taught that if you had an advantage in something in terms of export et cetera—particularly nowadays in a global market with globalisation taking place at the rapid rate that it is—then you took advantage of it.

What we in this nation do is tax the major ingredient to the running of the nation. We have this extraordinary nation of low population, large landmass and people living across that landmass. There is public transport in the major metropolitan areas and very little elsewhere, but we continue to have a policy which is developed around what you would see in a closely developed, public transport oriented European society. We do not live in that sort of world but our energy policy and initiatives tend to be based on that sort of outlook. Even though I have heard the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and others on a number of occasions try to justify that particular policy view, it is difficult to comprehend when we live in a nation of this size where energy costs are part of our daily lives, particularly for country people who do not have a choice between a subsidised public transport system and using their own vehicles.

In a sense, I would say that the government has shown very little initiative in terms of energy. Its approach has seen a simple form of taxation receipts where, as usage goes up, it can take more and more. By taking tax in little dribs and drabs at the bowser, where people do not necessarily notice it coming directly from their pockets, the government can accumulate vast sums of money.

Those vast sums of money are currently at about $14 billion annually. About $2 billion of those receipts actually goes back into the road network in some shape or other. Many members would remember that the origin of the federal excise was, in fact, the road tax arrangements that were put in place about 25 years ago. The taxation receipts from energy have grown over the years because of that. Admittedly, a few years back the government removed the indexation of the excise—and I compliment them for doing that—but there is an enormous amount of money coming from the excise on fuel. I do not see that as being an initiative at all; in fact, I see it as operating against a country that is trying to compete internationally.

We are continually told by some ministers within the government that agriculture and industry have to be able to compete internationally and to stand on their own two feet or they will go by the wayside, but we have in place an undermining of their financial structures. The question of energy runs through all industries, all communities and all individuals, who use it in their homes and so on. In some shape or other we have this regime of energy use, particularly petroleum energy, as a form of taxation receipt. Some in the government may suggest that it is way of rationing the use of the product by sending an economic signal to people to modify their behaviour and reduce their use of fuel. I say that is a red herring. I think the system is in place purely to raise revenue, and I do not see any initiatives where the government is actually looking at a means of raising revenue other than through fuel excise et cetera.

I would say the government’s movement on energy initiatives has been quite appalling. Even in areas where taxation did not apply some years ago, the government recently introduced legislation that would impose taxation where taxation had not applied before. They have developed this argument that the excise is related to the energy generated from the various products.

I refer particularly to one instance: ethanol was once untaxed. Now there is legislation, even though there is an excise-free period—and thank you to the Democrats and others in the Senate who stood up on this issue—until 2011, I think, and then taxation will be applied. Here again we get this mixed message. We have great concern about greenhouse gases. We had a debate in the parliament today during question time about whether the Kyoto agreement should be signed or whether there are other ways of delivering the same outcome, depending on which side of the debate you happen to be on.

What has the government actually done? It has imposed a taxation regime on people who are very keen to invest in renewable fuels. It has imposed a regime similar to that already on fossil fuels to sustainable renewable energy sources of fuel. The message it sends to the investment community domestically is quite horrendous. The government also put in place—back in the year 2000 before I was a member of this parliament—a mandatory renewable energy target of 350,000 megalitres. That was the target then. I am told—and the member for Kennedy and others have mentioned this figure from time to time, and statistical information I have seen verifies it—that currently we are at a rate of 30,000 megalitres.

The Prime Minister had a cup of coffee with the fuel companies about 12 months ago to try and avoid the mandatory position that some were suggesting we should take—I was one of those people. Following the cup of coffee, some voluntary agreements were reached by the fuel companies and the Prime Minister that the fuel companies would achieve certain levels on an annual basis with a movement towards this 350,000 megalitre figure by 2010. We are six years in and we are at 30,000 megalitres. We have to multiply that by a factor of 10 to get to this paltry rate of 350,000 megalitres. This year the fuel companies, I am told, were supposed to have reached something like 90,000 megalitres. They got to a third of that. That says a number of things to me. The fuel companies are not serious about renewable energy in terms of biodiesel and ethanol, and the Prime Minister and the government are quite happy to let them play the game in front of the ball. Even if 350,000 megalitres were reached, it is 0.8 of one per cent of our petroleum needs. If that is an achievement, an initiative in terms of moving towards a sustainable form of energy, a renewable form of energy that has an impact on a whole range of environmental and health outcomes—small particle emissions from vehicles, the carbon balance and a whole range of positives—and an initiative of great magnitude, I would hate to see a small one.

One of the things I suggest—and I have suggested it before by way of a motion in the parliament which was not adopted, I must say—is that the government and the opposition look seriously at setting up an authority. I would call it a sustainable energy authority. Rather than politics taking the main part of this debate, we should put in place an authority made up of expert scientists et cetera that can develop a strategy for the future and some decent initiatives for the future in terms of our energy requirements; that that authority not only look at the health and environmental aspects but also at the domestic production of some of these products; and that that authority also look at ways and means to achieve some sort of self-sustainability in relation to some of our energy needs. The United States are doing that. They have recognised that, given the events of the last five years in terms of terrorism and some of the religious conflicts that are occurring, they have to remove themselves from a reliance on the Middle East for some of their energy sources and they are moving at a massive rate to look at biofuels et cetera and many other alternatives. I am not suggesting biofuels are the be-all and end-all, but it is part of the fix and it is a renewable part of the fix that our agricultural sector could be very much involved in.

That authority should also look very closely in my view at the messages—economic, health and environmental, social and investment—that are sent by taxation on fuel, using fuel as a source of revenue. Perhaps, heaven forbid, we could actually look at achieving similar sources of income from other means. The goods and services tax was introduced to replace what was seen at the time by this government as archaic penalties which were being imposed on the communities by the states through some of their ridiculous taxation incentives. I think the same thing could be applied here. We have to look at some of the options.

I was recently in the United States. Their federal government had backed up the states in their energy standards and quality legislation relating to biofuels. One of the things that came across very clearly was that the industry could never have taken off if the states had not mandated a certain level of usage, with that level of usage being phased in over a period of time. For instance, in the city of Minneapolis the 10 per cent mandate had been phased in over a four-year period. Major cities were done in the first year, the outskirts of the major cities were done in the second year and the country areas were phased in in years 3 and 4. It was not necessarily done just to support the regional economies of agriculture, although that was a very important part. It was also done to improve the health regimes—the emission controls—within those particular cities. In conclusion, I would say to the Prime Minister that the initiatives have been very poor. We need to address these issues and we should do so in a much more substantive fashion. (Time expired)

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a very good and thoughtful speech by the member for New England, as always, in looking at alternatives for this country. We live in a time of volatile fuel prices due to some of the turmoil in the Middle East, the difficulties in Nigeria, the diminishing supplies in other areas, a lack of further oil discoveries in Australia and a lack of government response to help stimulate more exploration. A committee that I sat on in this parliament, the Standing Committee on Industry and Resources, made a recommendation for flow-through shares, which is an opportunity for small companies to raise money for exploration. In Canada it was a very successful model which allowed their smaller companies to get involved in more exploration. We have had none of that here. Some of the government members on that committee certainly lobbied for it, but of course it has not been taken up.

The Prime Minister’s paper was very poor and there were very few ideas in it. There were a lot of words but no initiatives of note. This all comes at a time when the economy is beginning to show signs of slowing down. The Prime Minister does not want to recognise that and he always has a contrary view. This government is really not looking at the burden that the price of fuel is putting on many Australians. The Prime Minister’s paper stated that the most important thing was the high demand coming from developing countries like China and India—that they were putting enormous pressure on the supply of oil—and that events such as Hurricane Katrina and the shutdown of the pipeline in Alaska limited the amount of oil coming from the United States. That leaves Australia with a problem. Because we have very little capacity to control petrol prices, that has left us at the sway of market forces, and that is happening now.

Fortunately, many of the constituents that we look after have a lot more understanding of their own concerns than this government does. They are feeling those increased prices—fuel prices are hurting them in their back pocket. People are saying that we in the parliament and the government in general should be sorting out the energy needs of the country by looking for alternatives, providing alternatives and encouraging alternatives. Instead, we continue to be beholden to outside powers for the supply of our fuel.

The population of this great country, Australia, is so scattered and widely dispersed that the cost of fuel has a huge impact on the daily lives of many people, but they have few alternatives. In my electorate, for instance, even if people wanted to ride a bike, they would have to ride a very long way in some areas to do what they wanted to do. They have to use a car. Many people have to drive their cars a long way to get to work, and fuel is an extra cost that they have to meet out of their weekly income.

For many people, travelling is a basic necessity; it is part of their day-to-day activities. People in remote and regional communities have enormous energy problems. In many areas of Australia, people rely on diesel not only for transport but also for power generation. Most areas of Australia do not have good, renewable hydro-electric energy to use as we do in Tasmania. We have also had good opportunities to use wind power; hydro-electricity and wind can cut in and out very easily. When the Prime Minister arrived in Northern Tasmania recently, the closure of the windmill factory at Wynyard, which is just on the other side of Burnie, was announced and 65 jobs were lost. This occurred because the government has not considered giving the opportunities to wind power that it should.

When we think about it, there are many roads that we can go down to look for alternatives. There are many alternatives being developed. In Tasmania, one of our universities is undertaking research into hydrogen engines. This will be a vital bit of research for our transport future. There are many roads that we could go down in our search for alternatives to petrol and diesel. We could consider ethanol, not just as an addition to fuel but in its own right. There is also natural gas, propane, hydrogen, biodiesel, electricity, methanol and p-series fuel. P-series fuel is a family of renewable non-petroleum liquid fuels that can be substituted for gasoline. They are a blend of 25 or so domestically produced ingredients. About 35 per cent of p-series fuel comes from light by-products known as C5-plus or pentane-plus, which are left over when natural gas is processed for transport and marketing. It is composed of about 45 per cent ethanol fermented from corn and 20 per cent MeTHF, which is derived from lignocellulose biomass, paper sludge, paper waste, food waste, yard and wood waste or agricultural waste. There are enormous opportunities for us to use these wastes and turn them into fuels. This is where we should be spending some money.

So there are many opportunities that we can pursue and could have pursued earlier if this government had been a bit more proactive and had seen what would happen if we hit out at the biggest source of our fuel—the Middle East and, in particular, Iraq. The US thought they could get something for nothing when they instigated all this and now we are hearing the lies that we have been supporting and the hypocrisy that has been evident to cover it all up. It has also been about oil. It has always been about oil. All the funds we have pursued with this war in Iraq could have been better spent in investigating alternative fuels and alternative machines to run with alternative fuels.

The Labor Party has been a strong supporter of alternative energy development, including biofuels. The use of ethanol in the Commonwealth government’s fleet has already been brought on. Labor governments in New South Wales and Queensland have also already introduced its use and are providing incentives for people to change. Now we have the government leaping into producing thousands of dollars of incentives for people to change their cars over to LPG. What the government has not said is that the cost is going to be a lot more than that which is being allowed for through these grants. It is going to cost people considerably more—probably double what can be claimed for.

The government also did not mention that there are very few people who can actually undertake the work. We are not very skilled up in this area and we will need to skill people up before people can get this conversion work done. I tried to get someone to quote on converting one of my family cars and I was told that there was no-one available to quote and that 2007 was probably when the conversion could be done. So we have a long way to go and I am sure a lot of people are going to have to wait a long time to get their car converted to LPG. There are about five or six outlets in Tasmania—Launceston, Hobart and three in my electorate on the east coast. I do not know if there are any on our west coast. There are none up the middle. So there are a lot of issues that you have to plan quite thoroughly if you do intend to convert. I do not think we should hold our breath that we will get assistance and that this paper announced by the Prime Minister’s will be a great initiative.

The PM has also recommended that there be capital funds to support new biofuel production capacity. I do not dispute that that will be a very good idea, but it is a bit late to be doing it. Labor has been talking about alternative fuels for many years now. It was the Keating government that introduced an 18c a litre production bounty for ethanol in the 1993-94 budget, in addition to zero excise weighting for the product. It was the Howard government that abolished that bounty scheme a year early, in the 1996-97 budget, and it has constantly undermined the industry by changing the terms of operation on a regular basis over the last 10 years, including having three different positions on excise in the last parliament alone.

We are dealing with a government that really is making policy on the run. It is very important that we have research in Australia, but we should be using some of the material already available to this parliament. There is already a Gas to Liquids Taskforce report that is gathering dust somewhere. We need an industry framework in which to encourage and establish the industries in Australia to convert our coal and gas resources—which are vast—to clean diesel. We need to develop training courses to help those people who wish to enter this new industry deal with the mechanics of changing existing technology. We need more emphasis on broader research on the energy fields and on how to make Australia self-sufficient in fuel. Australia has the resources, both fossil and renewable. We have more than anyone else. We are lucky in that respect and we could be independent from and competitive with the rest of the world. However, this is a paradox when we look at the mission statement of the Biodiesel Association of Australia:

We are more than 50 per cent reliant on international supply of fuel for all major industry, with a sharp decline in our self-sufficiency over the next 10 years to less than 20 per cent.

We could be doing so much better.

A report on Landline on the weekend said that Australia is more than ever in a position to start mainstream production of biodiesel. There is a person in my electorate who wants to talk to me about that and about using waste oils in a by-products plant that that small company uses. I remember my brother putting the oil from his takeaway shop in the garden. It certainly encouraged the worms, but it was not going to be a long-term solution. Making this stuff into biodiesel can be.

We need some guidance and we need a national standard. All of the hard work still has to be done, and we really want this government to do that and we want the Prime Minister to say those sorts of things. But the PM has said that we should reduce our future dependence on the Middle East. He is not really doing anything from a government perspective to encourage activity and research, and the private sector can only go so far. The government’s support is needed to expand our horizons of research and the infrastructure on which new ideas can be developed. We need to make the most of our advantages and develop leading edge technology, thus creating jobs while training our young people to be ready for the next wave of energy resources. (Time expired)

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the House for the opportunity to speak to the ministerial statement on energy initiatives, a topic made popular by the Australian motoring public, who continue to feel their wallets being ripped out of their back pockets whenever they leave their houses, because of the increasing cost of petrol. The price of fuel, with a 40 per cent increase in the last two years, has caused a lot of grief. Private health insurance has increased 35 per cent in the last four years. Even the proportion of people’s incomes taken up servicing their mortgages has gone up 30-odd per cent in the last four years—remarkable, given the commitments by this government at the last election. Add to that petrol increases because of the energy crisis, and we see the Australian public and Australian families really hurting. And yet we still have leading members of the government stating that any financial pain the Australian public say they are feeling is either because they are whingers or because it is simply their own fault.

But true to form, just like in early 2001, when the Prime Minister starts to feel some electoral heat, the government sheds a whole lot of money in an attempt to buy relief for themselves with the public’s money. If only the public could do the same. In the case of 14 August 2006, we saw the government’s grand plan for Australia’s energy needs. We have seen elements of this grand plan before: we have seen parrot power favoured over wind turbines, we have seen the government’s pro-nuclear choreography push biofuels to the wings and we have seen the heralded mandatory renewable energy target surgically neutered to cause a decrease in true conservative form—a decrease in the proportion of the nation’s energy generated by renewable means over the next decade.

Only a week ago, the Vestas wind turbine nacelle manufacturing plant in Wynyard in north-west Tasmania, in the seat of Braddon, announced it was closing down at the end of the year. This means that some 65 direct jobs and many more indirect jobs, such as those at Aus-Tech Compositer in nearby Camdale, will be lost. The major reason for this is the Howard government’s anti wind energy policy that does not extend the mandatory renewable energy target scheme. Wind energy projects in Tasmania have now been stymied by this regressive anti renewable energy stance, yet there has been not a word of regret or apology from the local Liberal member for Braddon. I assume he is just another apologist for the government’s appalling record of being anti renewable and alternative energy options.

The Prime Minister has said that petrol prices in Australia are low by international standards. This would be in contrast to interest rates, of course. While Australians have been feeding the highest proportion of their incomes into their mortgages for decades, we have spent the last 4½ years paying an average of 2½ per cent more than Europe, Canada and the United States. Two and a half per cent more in interest rates than comparable countries means one heck of a lot of money out of Australian household budgets. While the Prime Minister says we do not know how good we have got it, people continue to hurt.

It is somewhat ironic that the government is wanting to spend money—in this case, on LPG conversions—but there are not enough skilled workers around to earn it. We all support LPG conversion. At the time the government got up and said, ‘Look, we’re doing the right thing; we’re announcing a $2,000 subsidy,’ the LPG conversion industry went into turmoil. Stock was not and still is not available; tradesmen are not available; overseas supplies are not available. The following questions have to be asked: was it planned? Was there consultation with the industry or was it another off-the-cuff attempt at the billboard policy which we are becoming increasingly used to?

People will have to wait up to 12 months and longer for their conversions and the financial relief that a conversion will bring along with it. How many motorists around the country will benefit from the government’s LPG announcement? It has been estimated at three per cent. That is not what I would call a national energy plan. It is also highly disappointing that the not-for-profit organisations’ fleets are not eligible for the rebate. You would think that the thousands of people whom charities assist every day would benefit just that little bit more from the public’s donations if not-for-profit organisations could also access and use cheaper fuel. If not from LPG, perhaps not-for-profit organisations’ fleets could benefit from another government initiative or trial at some point, if the alternative fuel industry develops certain products and opportunities arise whereby the government needs a small market to trial initiatives. Perhaps those who help our community could be included and thereby helped in their work.

While it is not exactly new technology—test cases exist right around the country—compressed natural gas has been recently highlighted. Some 800 buses in total use compressed natural gas to fuel public transport in all of our state capitals, bar Hobart. Adelaide has had them since 1988 and no doubt has increasingly benefited from the 95 per cent reduction in exhausted sooty materials. Supporters of natural gas say it produces fewer greenhouse emissions than petrol. Motorists could save 50 per cent of their fuel bill and it has been technically proven that it can be used in different mixes and in all classes of vehicles with reduced engine wear, and it is available now.

I look forward to seeing the alternative energy markets starting to work with each other, complementing each energy’s individual benefits and seeing just how efficient and cost-effective we can become. For instance, how would a diesel bus run if it used biodiesel as its more or less traditional fuel to provide pilot ignition with natural gas used at the same time for the rest of the combustion? The ratio of the much cleaner and cheaper diesel to crystal-clear natural gas is 30-70. So the amount of dirty old diesel being used is comparatively very low.

One CNG user was interviewed by the 7.30 Report, which, in a fair umpire’s fashion—as is the ABC’s way—reported that the interviewee took eight hours to fill his car’s CNG tank. He uses dual fuel: compressed natural gas until it runs out, at which time the engine reverts to petrol. He gets home in the evening, hooks the car up to the CNG unit and leaves it overnight to refuel. That is not the kind of thing we would see in grand prix motor racing, but it is something nevertheless. The process sounds pretty inconvenient, but, whatever the particulars of this interviewee’s situation, many vehicles around the nation are now using CNG, just as they are overseas.

In Argentina, one-fifth of the vehicles are powered by natural gas. It is a potential way forward, either in combination with other fuels or used in isolation with any given vehicle at any one time. Just as we have seen combinations of fuel tanks in and under vehicles for many years, we may increasingly see more combinations of fuels, hopefully in smaller fuel tanks, in years to come, engineering the best, cleanest, cheapest and most sustainable mix of fuels that we can use through much of the 21st century. I hope that all governments will support the energies that are driving these technologies forward for the public benefit.

These issues should have been on the agenda for the government for some time. They have been in power for 10 years and we have not seen anything from them on alternative or renewable energy in that period. The writing was on the wall: more than 10 years ago, anyone could have told you that at some stage in the very near future we would have an energy crisis. The government did nothing to avoid the problem or to ease the pain now facing the Australian public due to higher petrol prices.

Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The ministerial statement made to parliament by the Prime Minister on 14 August 2006 on energy initiatives, which we are debating today, is a very interesting topic. It is not just an interesting topic; it is a fundamentally important one for this nation and for the world. At the very end of the statement the Prime Minister draws us back to the white paper of just two years ago and argues that the white paper gave a fundamental framework for pushing forward to the future and that it continues ‘to provide a robust framework for meeting the nation’s energy goals of prosperity, security and sustainability’.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nonsense!

Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lyons is right. Anyone who has had a look at this area in any depth—at the white paper of two years ago and at the responses by the Prime Minister to this over time—knows that not enough is being done and in relation to what is being done there is certainly no great urgency. A good part of that, one might think, is because of the fundamental point of view that is taken by the Prime Minister about this issue and whether or not much can be done.

Al Gore is in Australia today—on the fifth anniversary of the attack on the twin towers—to promote his film, An Inconvenient Truth, which, along with other members and senators, I just saw in the last sitting. It is a fantastic promotional vehicle for him in terms of another potential push for presidential nomination from the Democratic Party in the United States. But it is not, as this government’s Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources said, simply or purely entertainment. That is the most dramatic misreading I think I have ever seen of anything. I just wonder whether the minister has seen this film at all. It is a compelling piece of work. One of the misconceptions that is put—misconception No. 5, as Al Gore calls it—is this:

There is nothing we can do about climate change. It is already too late.

He regards this as the worst misconception of all because if you deny most of it and if you look at most of the government’s responses we effectively have pure denial—not complete unadulterated denial, but as close to it as you can get. The Prime Minister in question time today told us, as is his wont, that there may be climatic change—and we may have some proof for that—but the way to fix this is not to do what everybody else in the world has done, except for the United States and Australia: that is, sign up to the Kyoto protocol because the Kyoto protocol will not do enough and because it will not do enough we will not sign up to it. We will have a fundamental argument that the developed nations would be carrying more of the weight and, as the Prime Minister has done in this very paper again, say that too much of the burden would be on Australia.

What is most indicative about the arguments put by Al Gore is that the kind of pillorying of him by the Republicans as a presidential candidate and, previous to that, as a vice president is mirrored here by this Prime Minister’s response to Labor and its approach to these matters and to the environment. What they did was take Gore and try and demonise him—put a stamp out to say Al Gore is so out there, a crazy leftie; he is off about all these environmental things. They said that the core business of the United States is just ensuring the other side of the coin—economic prosperity—and that they will do this by continuing to do things the way they have been done in the past. He just missed becoming President of the United States by a fraction—a very small number of votes in Florida. Since President Bush has been in office we have seen that he has not addressed the fundamental problems that Al Gore started to talk about many years ago.

The film lays it out very simply: his motivation in this area and the manner in which he has approached it have largely been driven by his experience as a science student in the United States under the leading proponent of the theory of what was going to happen in the future with the exponential effect of the increase in greenhouse gases in our environment and the fact that they would be trapped by the upper layers of the atmosphere. As that quantity of greenhouse gases produced largely by our industrial activity was trapped over time, you would get a cloud effect—an increasing and denser cloud—far fewer of the sun’s rays hitting the earth would be reflected and you would get a gradual but inexorable increase in the amount of heat that is retained.

Utilising some of the work that has come from the CSIRO as well as other leading groups in climatology in the past couple of years, what Gore demonstrated—and demonstrated to great effect—is that this effect is true and it is real. What he laid out when he first went into the Senate, when he first had hearings in the United States congress on these matters and their potential effect, has been demonstrated so conclusively and so compellingly that you cannot just gainsay it and say, ‘There is plenty of time to do something about this,’ which is part of the other key point.

The only significant measure that we have seen in the past year is through the United States and China, India and a few other users coming together and saying: ‘Kyoto is not enough.’ Most of the people who are involved in this either did not sign up to Kyoto or, having done so, have said that more needs to be done. They identified that you need not only the Kyoto protocol but ‘Kyoto protocol plus’ to actually have a go at this fundamental problem. They found that you really need to drive at this through new technology and new approaches to fuel use in order to decrease the burden of greenhouse gases on this planet. We need to use innovative ways to get a resolution of this problem and a diminution over time compared to the current rate.

In fact, if the Kyoto protocol were put into place fully and all of its measures undertaken, we know that would do part of the job of reducing greenhouse gases significantly, but it will not do the whole job of dealing with the current projection that science is telling us we need to consider. In Gore’s book, he makes it very simple: what is the fundamental target? The target is a 60 per cent reduction in our greenhouse gas production. His argument and the argument that is put forward in a leaflet that accompanied this book from the Australian Conservation Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund, titled Australia’s Inconvenient Truth, is that it is actually possible to reach that by a series of measures. Gore had a pie chart at the end of his presentation which indicated that a series of measures could, in fact, achieve that by 2050 if we have the will and the determination. As a former Vice-President, Gore has argued that that will and determination have been absent in the United States, and he gave Australia a mention in passing. It is true: they have not been evident here.

What is in the Prime Minister’s paper to address this? A number of relatively small changes—again, small, iterative changes—and really no fundamental desire to take this up and really run with it. There is a complete refusal to mandate a whole series of areas. I think we do need some mandatory policies in this regard. I think we need to look at the situation carefully.

The problem we have got was recently dramatised by Tim Flannery in his book on this area. A comparison is that it will not be a problem for us in geological terms. In the past—100 million years ago—the earth’s climate was very different. We have had periods of intense greenhouse activity in the past and there is indeed some really good scientific work that has recently been done, demonstrated in a TV program called The Future is Wild, which looked at the world 100 million years hence. They argue that the world will suffer a massive greenhouse effect in some ways dwarfing what it is currently facing.

The reason that those greenhouse conditions will be generated and that the effect they will have on the climate will be so great will be the continuing movement of the Australian continent and other continents. In 100 million years forecasters expect that the Australian continent will effectively be a high plateau that will smash into North America and help to create a whole mountain range as high as 12,000 metres. The Himalayas are about 5,000 metres high. I doubt that in 100 million years we will be around as a species. In geological time you can have a glacial approach to these matters. The earth will survive. It will renew itself. But it will be enormously different.

In our time—because we do not live in geological time—we actually need a pretty good approach to this and pretty quick action. Vice-President Gore argues that we have a window of about 10 years. The Prime Minister has proposed that the government will spend some money on one of our greatest resources—liquified petroleum gas. They will give 1,000 bucks to people as an incentive to buy LPG fuelled cars—that is, if they have already come off the production line. We have a massive resource in LPG. That resource has not been properly tapped and driven. This is an area you could mandate more. You could do a great deal more with government fleets—federal and particularly state owned fleets. You could start the process by getting this thing running hard.

Secondly, there is ethanol. The discussion in this paper is about the distribution of ethanol. The Prime Minister finally came back to say that 10 per cent ethanol is okay. In this paper he takes a whack at the shadow minister for primary industries, resources, forestry and tourism, Martin Ferguson—extremely ungenerously—and at a number of other people within the Labor Party. Then he says, ‘It is only the coalition that has ensured this.’ The Prime Minister only took the step of going back to the ethanol debate and getting an agreement on ethanol and its use because the shadow minister came to the government and said that it was time to fix this.

The original approach did a great deal of damage to a number of people in the industry. Labor’s fundamental approach was that there was one person and one company that was benefiting from those measures. A fundamental argument was being used. There was a broader debate on that. I know how deeply affected that company was by that debate. I know how deeply affected people who had petrol stations were as part of that. It happened in my electorate, which is why I was involved in the discussions. But the fundamental thing here is that you actually need an agreement on both sides. We have had that and we can push it forward.

But, where the government is providing money to help with the implementation of these measures, it will not mandate 10 per cent ethanol. I see no reason whatsoever not to mandate that 10 per cent of ethanol in order to get this up and running and driven along by whoever is in government. The Prime Minister is capable of doing it and he will not do it because he believes that you should just leave this open to choice. We could do a small part of what has already been done in the United States. We could do a fraction of what has been done in Brazil. All of those members from regional areas know what the capacity is. Henry Ford worked out in 1925 that you could use just about any source of vegetable matter on this planet to produce alcohol and therefore fuel. We could do a great deal more. This energy paper just does not do enough.

Further, we have the question of petroleum exploration. The Prime Minister rightly points out that, at a time of rising prices, we have a historically low level of exploration being undertaken worldwide. Australia properly needs to really get this moving very quickly. It is a correct thing to do to use Geoscience Australia’s work in order to look for a great deal more. But there is not a single sentence uttered in this paper—not even a syllable—about shale oil and what Australia has already done with that. We have massive resources in that area. It could be exploited. The government has done nothing to help that along. Gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids are important technologies that have not yet been addressed. A great deal more needs to be done. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Mrs Gash) adjourned.