It’s difficult to watch as the government is observing the sugar industry’s demise while refusing to lift a finger on a biofuel mandate, a costless measure that would give the whole industry new life. The Leader of the KAP and state Member for Traeger Robbie Katter has said.
The government announced support for a waste processing plant with ‘future phases create bio methanol and Sustainable Aviation Fuel’ with the headline ‘home-grown biofuels’.
“The amount of spin they’re having to use to make it look like they’re doing anything on fuel security would make Shane Warne proud,” Mr Katter said.
“It’s verging on cruel that while an ethanol mandate would give growers more markets, the government is running around saying ‘look over here, we’re spending money on something that might produce bio-fuels, one day’.
“When the millers and the growers are singing from the same song sheet begging for a mandate to support the besieged industry, you just can’t argue – but this government is!” The KAP leader said.
Australia produces 175 million litres of ethanol each year, but the facilities that are currently operating have at least 360 million litres of capacity. In 2024 83.6 million litres of ethanol.
“We can more than double our ethanol production overnight – not on distant horizon on a whim and a prayer, like the government seem to be focussed on.
“It just simply doesn’t make sense.
“It must be an awkward party room when you have coastal government backbenchers lauding the plight of the sugar industry and the need for fuel security, but their own government is letting the industry crumble.
“In fact, in Mossman they simply too the ‘too bad, so sad approach’ and threw money at the defunct cane industry there and hoped the problem is going to go away.
“You can’t keep pretending in media grabs and press releases that you’re doing something while industries close around you,
“The government have an important choice to make – do they support a mandate and rejuvenate the industry the Premier grew up in, or do they get the Treasurer ready to throw buckets of money at the whole cane industry.
“It’s a pretty simple equation, and headlines don’t cut, there needs to be real decisions made, and made now,” Mr Katter said.