Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

():  We export our oil production for $8,000 million a year and we import our petrol and diesel for $62,000 million a year. Someone could infer from this that we are run by morons, but, then again, I don't hear any answers coming from the opposition. Well, in our little bailiwick, we'll give you the answers—we'll talk about ethanol. There's a country called Brazil. It makes jetliners. I flew with Qantas the other day, and the plane was an Embraer jet made in Brazil, one of the most advanced industrial countries on earth—60 per cent of its fuel needs are met from ethanol.

When Iemma introduced ethanol in New South Wales, he said, 'I can't go another day with people dying that don't have to die,' and there is no doubt that, every year in Sydney, somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people die that don't have to die. If you put aromatics in your petrol, as we are doing, it's carcinogenic—the small particles are carcinogenic. If you put ethanol in, instead of the aromatics, you get rid of the small particles and you get rid of the carcinogens. Has this country done it? No.