Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak in support of the Excise Tariff Amendment (Ethanol and Biodiesel) Bill 2015, particularly because the bill now lays out a longer transition period for the excise rate for biodiesel. I am pleased that the government has amended this bill in the other place in order to achieve this transition to protect the local biofuel industry. The original provisions of the bill really laid out a worrying future for the industry and would have wound back, very significantly, the local industry. So I am very pleased that this bill, as it has come to the Senate, has provided for that longer transition.

The importance of biofuel and biodiesel is very significant in our transport mix. It is important that we are cleaning up our act and shifting our economy to a zero carbon economy as quickly as possible, and that means that the transition needs to occur across all energy sectors. Transport of course is no exception. Transport in Australia is the fastest growing source of our carbon pollution and, depending on what part of the country you are in, it ranges between 14 and 17 per cent of our emissions. So we need to be acting on our transport fuels. It is going to be the economically and environmentally responsible action and direction to be taking in order to create a clean energy future for our children and our grandchildren.

We consider that clean electricity from renewable energy is probably going to be the main game as we shift our transport fuels. We will be shifting to electric vehicles for cars; there is also the prospect of electric trucks, which have now been introduced into Australia. There is going to be significant potential from biofuels as a cleaner alternative fuel source. I recently had the opportunity to meet with a manufacturer of biodiesel, ARfuels, who are based in Barnawartha in north-east Victoria. They have a thriving business producing biofuels, supporting local jobs in their rural community. They are there in Barnawartha in regional Victoria, and there are other biofuels manufacturers across regional Australia, because they are co-located with animal agriculture that is providing the tallow, which is the input for their biodiesel production.

When I met with ARfuels, they were very concerned about the bill in its original form; very concerned that in fact, as it was originally conceived, they would have gone under. They would have no longer been able to produce biodiesel and no longer able to provide jobs in their local community. So I am pleased that with the longer transition periods, they will have much more certainty under the provisions of this bill and they will be able to build their biodiesel manufacturing.

The other major source that is going into biodiesel manufacture at the moment is waste cooking oil. When I was a councillor on the city of Maribyrnong, we had a massive problem with waste cooking oil. For many restaurants in my home town of Footscray, it cost them to dispose of their waste cooking oil. We had big problems with waste cooking oil being illegally dumped into drains, causing blockages of the drains, health problems and massive waste problems. It was a real initiative that met the waste problem and also helped with the production of an environmentally sustainable transport fuel when the initiative to begin collecting that waste cooking oil for the production in diesel oil began. That is also the sort of initiative that is being supported by just giving some incentives for the ongoing production of biodiesel. Using these waste products for producing a renewable energy source makes so much sense. What is needed, of course, is a level playing field with fossil fuels.

The other real issue, as well as electricity as a renewable energy source to potentially be used as a transport fuel and the use of biodiesel, is to be helping with Australia's fuel security. I have been on the Senate inquiry into fuel security and the big issue is that we do not have enough supplies of petroleum products in Australia. We only have 30 days supply whereas the internationally recognised amount of supply that we should have is 90 days. In order to deal with that as an issue, we really have two ways to go. We can either increase the amount of supply and the amount of storage that we have of our petroleum-based fuels or we can shift away from those petroleum fossil based fuels and produce more renewable transport fuels ourselves here in Australia. That latter direction is much more consistent with the shift to a zero carbon economy. I do want to note that biofuels really are only a desirable fuel so long as they are from genuine waste products—for example waste that it is not derived from native forests.

We also need to make sure, when we are creating those biofuels, that they are not competing with land and water that should be used for food production. It is incredibly important that prime agricultural land is still used to produce food. There are so many opportunities for the use of biofuels from waste and waste products, and from land that is not suitable for agriculture. They are the directions we need to be heading in.

As I said, it is important, in terms of the support for biofuels, to note that we still do not have a level playing field; we still have massive subsidies for fossil fuels in the Australian economy; $10 billion over the forward estimates. So, if we are going to be properly encouraging the use of biodiesel, we need to be addressing and removing those fossil fuel subsidies. We need to be looking at our overall fuel energy mix and how we are supporting clean energy alternatives. So, alongside our support today for the biodiesel and biofuels sector, the Greens are going to continue to call on the government to drop those huge handouts it provides in the form of fossil fuel subsidies.

I want to make a final point about the economics of supporting biofuel production and our shift to a zero carbon economy—that is, it not as if there are costs in making this change that are not balanced by what we are avoiding: the cost of climate change. It actually makes massive economic sense for Australia to play its role in tackling climate change in the world community. As media coverage over the last week has pointed out—and as the Greens know—the cost of not dealing with climate change is going to be an extraordinary imposition on the Australian economy.

Consider the costs of sea level rise; consider the costs of losing some of our tourist icons, like the Great Barrier Reef and the ski fields. The massive economic cost to the Australian economy is something we really need to be putting into the equation when we are considering the incentives that are required. We need to be looking at what is going to be really beneficial to the Australian economy as well as to the global environment. Thank you.