Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, there are issues that can be addressed in the short term, but there are issues for the long term as well. The government has looked at the freezing of excise in the past, and what I would like to bring attention to briefly is that this nation must look at alternative biorenewable fuels; it must look at ethanol. In my dissenting report I stated that we must start to look over the horizon. We must not just start to believe the major oil companies are going to progress with us in trying to develop a biorenewable alternative but also start to actively campaign in such a way as to deliver a mandate. We have tried to herd this elephant with a feather for too long. What is happening right now is that a lot of people who are trying to get into the ethanol industry are being compromised. Their product is just not being purchased. People are actually handing back their grants.

An inherent weakness in the committee’s report was its failure to consider the impacts of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel on fuel prices, climate change and liquids transport. Oil will become unaffordable long before it becomes unavailable. Because our economy, in the mining, agriculture and tourism sectors, is so vulnerable to any shift in supply and because oil can become an unaffordable major overhead, it is imperative on an economic base for this nation that we start to manage and work towards getting a biorenewable alternative.

My National Party colleagues and I put forward a number of recommendations which I hope go some way to actually delivering a solution to what will be an ongoing oil crisis. It is not going to get better; it is going to get worse. You may have a calm in the storm, but it is going to get worse. The only way we are going to manage it in the long term is by putting forward a program that starts delivering biorenewables as the majority of available fuel.

I leave the house with this: I think it was on 28 September 2005 that the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the major oil companies all stood up and said they would reach a 350 million litre target by 2010. It was supposed to be about 89 million litres this year. It just has not happened. The major oil companies have no interest in promoting a competing product. They have no interest in a process where they have excess refining capacity and so they have to discount their product. This is a way that we can deliver an affordable alternative. Sure, I take on board what Senator Fielding has said, but that is a very short-term issue that does not deal with the real problem. Our nation must move towards a biorenewable alternative and this government must be proactive in developing it.