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

I rise to speak in this second reading debate on the Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill 2006. I do not want to go over all of the arguments made by my colleague Senator Murray, who has principal carriage of this bill. We think it makes some sense to reform the Petroleum Retail Sites Act and even to replace it with the mandatory Oilcode but as he has said, and I have said, this should not be done before the Trade Practices Act is amended—and it should be amended to protected small business from large business. I do not think there has ever been such a good example of how, in the past, Australia has protected small business in the oil sector and in the retail sector, from the major oil companies who, as we know, would readily take up that sector.

The government needs to implement the Senate recommendations on the Trade Practices Act that were in the report of the Senate Economics References Committee of March 2003 entitled The effectiveness of the Trade Practices Act 1974 in protecting small business. We say that the government should, at the very least, implement those recommendations in that report with which it agreed. As I understand it, it accepted in full five of the recommendations and it accepted three in part. We would sooner see all of the recommendations picked up, but at the very least we argue that the Trade Practices Act must be changed before the Oilcode is introduced and replaces the Petroleum Retail Sites Act.

We would also like to see the collective bargaining provision in the Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2005 dropped in its entirety. We do not support that legislation, and we say that the two bills, and a new trade practices bill, should be cognately dealt with. But obviously we are now dealing just with the one bill before us.

My main interest in speaking today is to draw attention to a related issue, and that is the failure of this government to put in place measures which would see a place for alternative fuels in petrol retailing. I am referring to biofuels—ethanol and biodiesel—and gaseous fuels, including LPG and compressed natural gas in particular but also liquefied natural gas. This government, despite an agreement being reached under the Biofuels Action Plan just a little over six months ago, has failed to get the industry to meet even the modest voluntary targets that were set for the first 12 months of that agreement. We have a biofuels target of 350 megalitres, which is hopelessly inadequate in the scheme of things. That is a tiny percentage of what could be used by the transport industry by way of fuel replacement.

We have seen almost no growth—in fact I think it is fair to say we have seen no growth—in the use of compressed natural gas. Compressed natural gas has great advantages, but I think it is correct to say that there are no metropolitan stations which sell compressed natural gas. This is puzzling because compressed natural gas comes in a pipe to most people’s households. It goes into their stoves and ovens and sometimes it heats their hot water, and yet this valuable and very low emissions fuel has been ignored by this government.

The Democrats did negotiate a conversion grant scheme back at the time of the GST and diesel changes in 1998. That conversion scheme runs out next year. After that, there will be nothing being done by this government to encourage compressed natural gas into the transport sector. The conversions have not been taken up because there are very few retail opportunities. I once had a car that was converted to run on compressed natural gas. It was a dual fuel car but there was only one location in Melbourne for refuelling. It was certainly a long way out of the way for me; it was in a dark industrial sort of space that was quite unsuitable.

Until we get the full range of fuels available in each of our petrol stations, Australia is not going to move very far away from its dependence on fossil fuels and on oil that is largely now imported into this country. We will not use up our existing resources and we will certainly not be moving much to renewable fuels until the government takes a big stick, quite frankly, if I can put it that way. With minimal targets, like 350 megalitres, where there is no requirement and nothing is mandated and it is all up to the sector to do or not do, with respect to either the production or the selling of alternative fuels, it is not going to happen.

In fact, the government, as we understand it, is sitting on a report of the first six months of the Biofuels Action Plan. It knows that the industry has not been able to meet the target and is not likely to meet its first 12-month target. But it is not going to tell us that, of course, having sold to the Australian community the idea that it was working very hard to keep petrol prices down and to welcome onto the market alternative fuels. It is a pathetic situation that we currently find ourselves in. For this reason, I foreshadow that I will be moving a second reading amendment from the Democrats that notes that Australia has the capacity, with production facilities that are already on the ground—these are not ones that are planned or that we might be going to see the bank about; these are production facilities that are already churning out ethanol—to produce 110 million litres of ethanol a year. But of course we know that the major oil companies are holding the cards. They have only purchased less than a quarter of that amount. So it is the oil companies that are reluctant to sell alternative fuels, including ethanol blends. As I said, they have failed to meet the voluntary targets that were set for selling biofuels, as required under the Biofuels Action Plan.

The government’s reluctance to do any sort of mandating has triggered some action in other states. In Queensland, which is very much ahead of the pack on ethanol blends because of its sugar industry, at least the Queensland government has taken steps to encourage the take-up of ethanol blends. And now the New South Wales government is looking at methods to mandate ethanol.

We will be calling on the government to introduce a mandatory target in the order of 90 per cent of all retail outlets to have available E10—that is, 10 per cent ethanol, 90 per cent petrol—and biodiesel blends by 2012. It is not possible for us to amend the bill to do this, although we have examined that; we would have liked to put up amendments, and I think it would have been very interesting to see what the National Party would do, given their previous commitment to mandated targets. We think that is a modest kind of target. We are not even talking here about the total amount that would need to be sold; we are simply saying that motorists should have the choice. This government talks a lot about choice, about the need for families to have choice and so on, but virtually no-one has the choice in my home state of Victoria. I think there is one outlet close-ish to me in south Melbourne, but for the rest of the motoring population in Melbourne it is largely unavailable.

So we would like to see incremental increases each year; we think 20 per cent would be reasonable. So from 1 January 2007 the industry would be on notice that it has to make E10 available to motorists at their service stations, and each year those increases would be 20 per cent from the previous year so that by 2012 most people would have access to both biodiesel blends and ethanol blends.

I think it is interesting to consider that just the other day there was a press report that Saab is introducing a new vehicle into the Australian market that runs on 85 per cent ethanol. Senators here will recall that it was not that long ago that the government introduced fuel standards that in fact prohibit anything more than 10 per cent ethanol blends. It will be interesting to hear what the minister has to say about that. Will this car not get off the ground, as it were, in this country, because it is against the law to sell a blend of petrol and ethanol that is higher than 10 per cent? We pointed out at the time the absurdity of this ban. It is presumably going to be tested with this new vehicle. It is a great pity that senators and members in this place are not able to purchase such a vehicle so that we could be leaders, trendsetters, and get these vehicles on the road as part of our electorate provision of a car.

We also say that, if the government is not amenable to that, we would like to see all fuel contain a percentage of ethanol or a renewable fuel by 1 January 2007, with percentage increases according to a published schedule—so we would ramp it up. Obviously, we cannot put 10 per cent into every litre of petrol that is sold today—you cannot ramp up production overnight. There is some indication that, if we were to produce as much ethanol or even biodiesel as that, we would be taking away from food production vast tracts of land. So we recognise that this is not the answer to everything, but it does at least help keep the price of petrol down to a modest level and make us less reliant on fossil fuels and on imported oil.

Another option is to establish a mandatory target of 30 per cent of all retail outlets to have available compressed natural gas—again, a very modest target. It is a chicken and egg situation in that people will not have their vehicles converted to compressed natural gas if there are no retailers who sell it. Quite frankly, that is a pretty straightforward observation. As I understand it, it is possible to have a very small compressor at home, where you can hook it up to your garage and have it pump away during the night, compressing gas into your vehicle. That would be very cheap and, at the present time, not taxed. It seems to me that the home option and the option of having compressed natural gas available from your local petrol retailer would make a lot of sense.

That is the thrust of the amendment I am foreshadowing and will move, and I notice that the ALP have moved a not dissimilar second reading amendment. It is good to see the ALP finally recognising that alternative fuels have a place in the future of our transport sector, and this is welcome. For a long time the ALP joined with the government and voted in excise regimes which were inappropriate and which caused some of the major problems in confidence in biofuels. They thought that was a useful thing to do in this country, but it was not. It is good to see that the ALP have finally seen the light and recognise that the future in this country will, at least partly, be about alternative fuels.

I also recognise that there are some in this place who will want to see excise reduced on fuel. They will see that as an option, a way in which people can better afford petrol, but we do not see that as the answer. The government froze excise on petrol many years ago, and a great deal of revenue has been forgone as a result of that, so now Australia’s petrol is some of the cheapest in the world. The problem with that is that it has encouraged us to keep on purchasing big vehicles—four-wheel drives, V8s and V6s—so we are still consuming petrol at a terrific rate in this country when other countries have recognised the need to scale down to smaller cars and to have more fuel efficient vehicles in our mix.

It is interesting to note that in the last week I received a letter—no doubt many of us did—from Minister Abbott’s department offering the new range of vehicles for our electorate cars. We do not have, for instance, a rating on the list of cars that are available, and that list includes V8s and V6s—huge fuel-consuming vehicles. We do not have the green car rating, from which senators and members might be able to make an informed decision about what they are signing off on. We do not have any indication of the other cars which have been previously approved as non-standard vehicles, such as my Toyota Prius. I have now had three Toyota Priuses, and I use this opportunity to say how good they are and how little fuel they consume, but there is nothing in the list of cars available to us which suggests that the Prius is available. I may have to send a memo around to everybody explaining to them that it will be okayed if they put their hand up for it. I can recommend it as a beautiful car to drive, one which makes hardly any noise and uses less than one-third the fuel of a car of a similar size and a great deal less than some of the V8s and V6s that are on the list.

It is disappointing that we have a government that is interested in reform of a certain sort—reform that benefits the big oil companies—and does not care much about consumers. It does not care much about the environment, it does not care much about oil security and it is not interested in the long-term future of this country with regard to where our energy is going to come from for transport. I have also said many times in this place that this government does not care about alternatives, even to the private car.

We still have a situation in which this government—and it is one of very few in history—does not put any energy, time or money into the question of public transport. After the oil prices skyrocketed just a few weeks ago we heard people starting to say, ‘Now it’s almost cheaper for us to travel by public transport.’ I hope people do move across to public transport, particularly for commuting long distances, so that they do not sit in traffic jams on freeways for hours on end. I am sure it must be better to be reading the paper on a tram or a train and going to work in a less stressful environment. But, quite frankly, our public transport system is not up to meeting the needs of the vast majority of commuters. That is why they opt for a comfortable vehicle with air conditioning and a radio which takes them from point A to point B, instead of opting for transport where they might have to stand around waiting for lengthy periods of time and which will not connect with another transport mode to get them to their place of work or wherever they want to go.

So my message to the government through this legislation is that the government needs to look beyond this microscale, this micro kind of reform which sees to it that the major oil companies will own more petrol stations and which will move independents out of the sector even more than has been the case in the past. The government appears not to care very much about the future of our transport needs, our oil needs and the cost of transporting ourselves around.