VETERAN Federal MP Bob Katter has pleaded with government to finally prioritise Australia first with the immediate introduction of a reserved resources policy to secure our national energy needs, while globetrotting politicians scramble to stockpile month-by-month supplies of foreign-owned fuel at international crisis prices underwritten by taxpayers.
After decades of fighting for our natural resources to be set aside to satisfy domestic requirements before foreign-funded exploitation and export, the North Queensland MP of half-a-century is enraged that the long-overdue national reserve resource policy for gas – finally announced by Government at Christmas – is still not in place despite emergency energy supply deals being struck with our Asian trade partners.
Mr Katter said that regardless of the Government’s tax mechanism on foreign-owned gas exporters in hotly speculated Budget reforms, the question remained as to how any tax on surplus profits of ‘unconditional’ exports can deliver Australian gas for exhaustive use by Australians first – as mandated by a long-awaited national reserved resource policy, which for 20 years has safeguarded Western Australia’s energy stability and state independence, as with almost every other country on Earth preserving resources for priority local use.
With Australia among the most resource-rich countries on Earth, “there’s no justification at all for us to be in this bind”, said Mr Katter of the Middle East war-driven global energy shock on Australia’s lifeblood transport systems and food producers, in dread at the diesel and fertiliser supply insecurity without crisis transparency.
“But what are our governments doing? Absolutely nothing,” raged the former Queensland mines and energy minister – whose efforts to legislate a reserve resource policy in Federal Parliament have been continuously rejected by the major and green parties for the past two decades along with his repeated moves to legislate for Australia’s sustainable production of renewable biofuels, to protect not just our fuel security but also our feedstock industries’ future, and people’s health and hip pockets.
“While politicians are running around in this crisis talking about some oilfield in the state’s south-west that’s so tiny, I didn’t even bother to look at it when I was minister, they still haven’t done a single thing about the very simple conversion of our North Queensland sugar mills into refineries to supply ethanol-blended fuels – which should have been nationally mandated by now, as a matter of urgency, let alone be properly enforced by two states that have lip-service ethanol-fuel blend mandates compared to the rest of the world, already being majority-fuelled by sustainable local industries.
“Yet our governments are basically doing nothing except trying to make efforts to be seen to be doing something – when the reality is they’re doing nothing. Go look at your bowsers, if you doubt me.”
Mr Katter said it was a national shame that Australia’s biofuels manufacturers were being forced into export valuable fuel supplies to meet foreign demand not just because of our governments’ successive policy failures to safeguard domestic industries, but even worse while bowser prices are rocketing and taxpayers underwriting government grasping efforts in a global fuel grab.
“I promise the people of North Queensland and all Australians: we will do everything in our power to get governments to move to 30 per cent ethanol-blended petrol and fight furiously for immediate implementation of reserve resource policy for gas, to ensure the survival of our iconic industries for our nation’s future.”