Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance and Administration (Senator Minchin) to a question without notice asked by the Leader of the Australian Democrats (Senator Allison) today relating to funding for liquified petroleum gas conversions.

The real concern the Democrats have with this issue—an issue which needs attention all of the time rather than just when petrol prices get sufficiently high that governments feel that they need to be doing something—is our continuing addiction to oil. That is something that even President Bush acknowledged, in his most recent State of the Union address, needs to be acted on.

Frankly, it is a pretty sad day when even President Bush recognises the need for action to move away from an addiction to oil for transportation but our government does not recognise that need. Whether the US President is actually acting on his comments is another matter, but it is well past time that we acknowledged the major problems—environmental and economic—that stem from our continual blinkered approach of ‘steady as she goes, she’ll be right’ when it comes to oil and petroleum issues.

I had cause to note over the last week the wide range of things that Democrats founder Don Chipp could claim credit for during his time in the Senate as a Democrat. Let us not forget that, in amongst Don Chipp’s 81 years, he was actually only in the Senate as a Democrat senator for a little over eight years. In that time, he played a significant and very early role in, amongst many other things, promoting biofuels, ethanol and alternatives to oil.

Of course, there were many Democrats following on from him who also tried to do everything possible to cajole, encourage and poke the then Hawke and Keating governments into giving support for potential industries, particularly ethanol. We did manage to get extra support—I think in the budget around 1993—for the development of the ethanol industry. That early, very important embryonic funding and assistance for ethanol development was gutted by the current federal government not long after they came into office in 1996. It is only now, 10 years later, that some of those bits and pieces of funding support and incentives are starting to be provided again.

I say all that by way of demonstrating how much opportunity can be lost and how much time has already been lost—well over a decade; probably more like two decades, really—because people failed to recognise the problem. A little bit of long-term vision and action to put in place the starting points for alternative approaches that will become mainstream down the track were clearly needed—and are clearly needed now.

I do not think there is any point getting into an argument about whether oil might peak in the next few years or 10 years or 20 years. The key factor is that, within many of our lifetimes—and certainly in the lifetimes of our children—we will need to be relying predominantly on environmentally sound fuels, biofuels and other alternative sources of energy. We will be putting ourselves far ahead of the pack if we act now and we do it in a logical and well thought through way—rather than the knee-jerk, nonsensical responses that do not address anything in a long-term way, which is what we have seen from the government. If there is big enough pressure, they will suddenly do something to try to take off the pressure. There are one-off and badly thought through proposals but there is no long-term vision, and that is what we need. That is what the Democrats have been working towards for 20 years or more, and we will continue to do so. It is about time the government got on board with not only us but also many others in the community.

Question agreed to.