Mr FITZGIBBON (12:55 PM) —I congratulate the member for Wills on his forensic account of what has gone on in the ethanol industry over the course of the past few months. I should acknowledge that the focus of this debate has understandably been on the ethanol issue. Why wouldn't it be when the Prime Minister is handing out such large amounts of taxpayer-funded money to one of his mates—his mate who controls 96 per cent of the ethanol industry? The Energy Grants (Cleaner Fuels) Scheme Bill 2003 and the Energy Grants (Cleaner Fuels) Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2003 are comprehensive. I am not too sure that those who cover proceedings in this place understand just how comprehensive they are. On that basis, it is very disappointing that these bills were introduced into this place only last week and that the government insisted that they be brought on for debate in the House of Representatives this week. In other words, there was very little time for the opposition to properly comprehend the extent and scope of the bills being considered this afternoon.

They are wide-ranging bills. They effectively deal with the government's fuels policy out to 2012. They do not just deal with ethanol; they provide subsidy grants to all biofuels in this country. In addition to that, they deal with measures to encourage a greater uptake of low-sulphur diesel and of course the more environmentally friendly unleaded petrol. It is worth noting that those initiatives are being funded with additional taxes on fuels for motorists. I will acknowledge that they are not large ones, but it is still a fairly sneaky additional burden on motorists in the absence of any real public debate on that issue. These are important matters because the motorist has, of course, in recent years already had a GST imposed on unleaded petrol. The government would argue that the excise was reduced on fuel to partly offset the imposition. I underline the word `partly' because, as you know Mr Deputy Speaker Barresi, at a strike rate of about 77 cents the GST begins to compound the price of unleaded petrol and therefore that 7c reduction in excise is only effective up until the 77c range for unleaded petrol. So we are dealing with additional taxes on the Australian motorist as part of these bills; that is an important point to make.

Under the provisions of these bills, an entity will be entitled to a cleaner fuel grant if it imports or manufactures biodiesel or certain other cleaner fuels. The cleaner fuel grant will offset the customs excise duty payable on the biodiesel such that the current effective excise rate of zero for pure biodiesel is continued. Recent debate on this matter has shown the complexity of this debate and has demonstrated that the development of a self-sustaining and diverse biofuels industry is an extremely complex issue. Therefore, it is an issue that requires complex answers and well thought out policy solutions. It is not about helping your mates; it is about taking a holistic, whole-of-government approach to fuels policy in this country.

I made the point that these bills deal with matters that apply until at least 2008—I think until 2012. We can only assume that this is the government's transport fuel policy for the next decade or more. This is it; this is as good as it gets from the government. It is a piecemeal approach to subsidising certain fuels and will increase taxes on motorists to offset the costs of some other clean fuel initiatives. This is it. Where is the energy policy? Where is the government's nationally integrated approach to transport fuels in this country? I acknowledge that, as a result of the Trebeck report, the government has committed to tax neutrality across all transport fuels. The member for Wills mentioned that that is going to have an impact on industries that are currently exempt from excise.

It is interesting that, when Trebeck first made that recommendation, the Treasurer, in a media release, rejected that proposal. Why did he reject that proposal? On that day, he said in writing that the government believed the excise imposed on LPG would destroy the LPG industry. In this year's budget, the Treasurer turned around and said that, regardless of what Trebeck said when he first delivered his report, the government is now going to impose a tax across the board, including on LPG. Where is the mechanism to cushion the blow on the LPG industry? There isn't one. The Treasurer said, when Trebeck reported, that it could not be done, because it would destroy the LPG industry. Then in this year's budget he just did it, without any indication whatsoever of any initiative taken to cushion the impact on the LPG industry, a burgeoning industry—a cleaner industry, compared to traditional fuels—which is important to employment growth in this nation. There was no initiative whatsoever.

The government needs to take a wholly integrated approach to energy policy in this country, not one that deals with these matters on a piecemeal basis. That might, at some point in time, mean tax-neutrality across fuels, but how about a discount for environmental efficiency? That would be one means of ensuring that the impact on industries, or on sub-sectors such as LPG, were cushioned. The government needs to take initiatives to grow the consumption of gas-based fuels in this country, not only on environmental grounds but as a means of addressing our increasing dependency on the importation of traditional fuels. As the House would be aware, we have enormous gas reserves in this country, many of which are stranded and uncommercial at this point. But they could more quickly become commercial if the government were to encourage greater consumption of gas-based fuels—gas to liquid diesel being the most obvious example. But there is no plan. All we have is a hotchpotch of subsidies to certain industries and certain mates, and a very subtle approach to cleaner fuels in the unleaded petrol and diesel areas but paid for by the taxpayer.

Returning to the matter of ethanol, the government's approach over the last few months has damaged, and undermined public confidence in, the ethanol industry. The government has done this by delaying the introduction of a cap on ethanol blends until 1 July this year and by only introducing their labelling bill to parliament on 26 June this year, four months after it was promised on 19 February; it has done so by doing special deals to favour the government's mates and misleading the Australian people by saying that the Prime Minister did not protect the business interests of the Manildra Group; and it has done so by falsely promising sugar growers and their communities that ethanol would be a panacea for all the sugar industry's problems.

The Prime Minister's special deal was a taxpayer funded subsidy, 96.1 per cent of which will be received by the Manildra Group. The subsidy amounts to a benefit of over $150 per tonne of grain, in favour of the Manildra Group, which will disadvantage intensive agriculture industries such as the chicken, pork and lot-fed beef industries, as the member for Wills just pointed out. These are, of course, major employers in regional Australia.

Unlike the Howard government, Labor is committed to ratifying the Kyoto protocol. I think the Kyoto protocol sits at the core of many of these issues. In December 2002, Labor moved to more than double the Howard government's mandatory renewable energy target to five per cent by the year 2010. Of course, the government voted these initiatives down. These are signs of Labor's real commitment to the environment. The bills before the House today are a sign of a lack of planning and a lack of commitment to energy policy, and they are certainly a sign of a government that is prepared to help a mate.

The member for Wills raised an important, relevant issue: the government's determination to frustrate the release of the FOI documents in respect of the Brazilian shipment and the role played by the government, in conjunction with the Manildra Group, in frustrating the passage of that cargo. As I understand it, the Senate will sometime this week be dealing with the excise imposed on ethanol as part of its total package. This means that a tax will go on ethanol to offset the grants already paid to the Manildra Group. The talk around the place is there is a big chance that the passage of that bill will be denied in the Senate. That would mean that Dick Honan would walk away with his big subsidy grants but would not pay tax on the ethanol produced.

People are asking, `Who will be at fault if this comes to pass?' The government will be at fault. The first question I ask myself when considering this proposition is whether the Labor opposition, notwithstanding its concerns about the subsidy to ethanol, supported that subsidy when it came to this place. It did not. Of course, the subsidy did not come into this place. The subsidy is being provided under a contractual agreement between Minister Macfarlane's department and the company, and this parliament has not had a say.

If the government wants to go ahead paying a subsidy to a mate in the expectation that the opposition will happily put its hands up in the Senate for a new excise imposed on ethanol, it may find it has another thing coming. The very easy, clear and sure way for the government to ensure that those excise provisions pass the Senate by the end of this week is for it to do what we have been asking it to do for some time now—that is, release the rest of those documents that we are seeking under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. If the government comes to this issue with clean hands, if the government has nothing to hide, it will release those documents. If it does not release those documents and those excise provisions do not go through the Senate and the Prime Minister's mate Dick Honan finds himself with a big fat bonus, there will be only one person to blame—and that will be the Prime Minister himself.