|
Election '07 and Biofuels |
|
|
 Whilst Australian Biofuel Users is an apolitical organisation, we will recommend political parties purely based on our interests from the policies that they produce.
We have requested policy details from all parties in the 2007 Australian Federal Election.
Unfortunately, despite many requests, including direct requests to the Environment Ministers (both acting and shadow), the major parties appear to have no specific policies regarding biofuels and have issued none in reply.
From 32 parties running in the election, only 2 have given us detailed responses. The Australian Greens Party and the Australian Democrats Party have both responded to our questions. Both of these answers seem well considered.
The original questions, can be found here .
The responses are summarised as follows:
Democrats - Remove excise until targets met for commercial producers; remove excise from home production.
- Retain excise on petroleum fuels and remove from alternative.
- Funding on alternative fuels to get the same spending as oil exploration
- Tax incentives on efficient vehicles, funded from disincentives on inefficient vehicles.
- Removing lower biofuel blend limits and mandating higher blends.
- All government fleets to use efficient and alternative fuel vehicles
- Work with the biodiesel industry to establish standards.
- Biofuels Research Centre
- Include sustainability objectives in legislated targets for biofuels.
- Provide funding for research and commercialisation of 2nd generation feedstocks.
- (complete original response can be read here ).
Greens - Global Oil Depletion Protocol to assist transition away from fossil oil.
- Establish “Oil Independence Commission” as other countries have.
- Reallocate subsidies for fossil fuels to incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency.
- Replace 90% of fossil oil by 2050 with electric and biofuel solutions
- Rail infrastructure upgrade to shift people and freight off the roads.
- Mandatory fuel efficiency standards in government fleets as well as conversion to gas/hybrid/electric vehicles.
- 10% minimum biofuel target by 2020
- No excise on biofuels and no GST on the sale of biofuels. Excise exemption on user produced biofuels.
- Transport fuel excise replaced with a carbon tax on emissions.
- 2nd generation feedstocks subject to standards for biodiversity and sustainability.
- Strategies to encourage and assist farmers to generate renewable energy and help deliver this to the rest of Australia.
- (Complete original response can be read here ).
For the major parties, as no response was received, we will have to comment based on available media releases and past history.
The present Coalition Government, with the assistance of the Labour Opposition have both voted for the present changes to the excise regime, as well as the Cleaner Fuels Grant Scheme. This has seen the death of much of the once promising biofuels industry, now in a significantly worse position than they were prior to these changes. The present government had demonstrated a minor intention to help biofuels with some low targets set in 2001, followed by what the industry saw as a back flip, or a stab in the back in 2006 with the Fuel Bill amendments. Since then 2 of Australia’s largest biodiesel producers have closed their facilities citing government indifference.
Now, although the Nationals did not respond, shortly after our submission to them, they did produce a media release. From this release, we can see that they have offered $5M on a pilot lingocellulosic ethanol plant as well as a $6M trial of B20 in heavy vehicles. They also mention the extension of a program designed to help service stations with pumps for ethanol. None of these measures show any specific considered plan for the future and particularly in the case of the B20 “trial”, it is simply placing arbitrary and wasteful spending on something that has already been done. The fact that this “trial” is being offered shows a misunderstanding of biodiesel and a capitulation to fossil fuel interests. It is also difficult to take such media releases seriously after the Nationals voted with Liberals and Labour to bring about the recent fuel tax amendments.
To summarise, it is clear that none of the major parties consider biofuels to be important in Australia in the same way that Australian Biofuel Users do. However, there are 2 minor parties who seem to have a vision and strategy for biofuels in Australia that seems mostly aligned with what we consider Australia’s best interests are.
It needs to be remembered that while one party held a senate majority, the recent fuel tax amendments were able to become legislation without the ability for either the Greens or the Democrats to scrutinise and debate it properly in the Senate.
With this in mind, Australian Biofuel Users would recommend voting for the Greens and the Democrats in the senate to hope to secure better numbers to prevent a one party majority from easily clearing future legislation that may further damage the interests of biofuels in Australia.
|