Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

By my reckoning, this would result in biodiesel having a selling price of $1.27 and petrodiesel having a selling price of 89c. Minister, if you can confirm that, doesn’t that absolutely demonstrate the disadvantage to biodiesel in your proposal? Doesn’t that mean that farmers and miners and anyone else off road would have rocks in their head to be buying biodiesel when, all other things being equal, there is such a huge disadvantage to biodiesel for off-road use?

As I tried to point out earlier, there is a disadvantage for biodiesel on road. We do not have the benefit of modelling to show this, but even using current prices and projecting them out demonstrates that this is absolutely the case. But nothing could be more clear than the situation for off-road use and how this bill so significantly disadvantages it. It does not have the Energy Grants Credit Scheme; it does not have the excise that you talked about earlier—the so-called loophole. I do not think it is a loophole, but that is not a factor. This is a pure and simple case of diesel getting the fuel tax credit of 38c a litre and biodiesel not getting any sort of rebate or credit. Therefore, it is going to be so much more expensive than diesel.