19 August 2026: After more than three decades fighting to mandate renewable ethanol made from Australian sugar and grain to blend into cleaner and cheaper biofuels, Kennedy MP Bob Katter has cautiously welcomed the Federal Government’s release of a policy consultation paper – but warned local manufacturing must be prioritised to rectify our reliance on imports by foreign-owned oil giants.
Following yesterday’s confirmation in Canberra that Federal Labor Ministers are pushing ahead with consultation on the Government’s proposed policy for ‘low carbon liquid fuels demand measures’ to strengthen sovereign fuel security capabilities along with Australian industries, Mr Katter credited the long-awaited development to indefatigable proponents such as Dick Honan and his Manildra Group staff – “who despite nothing but setbacks, have soldiered on for decades by exporting their locally owned and made ethanol” – along with our iconic sugar and grain feedstock industries.
“It is a measure of just how bad our Governments have been in Australia, that we have remained one of the very few countries left on Earth to not mandate cleaner and greener ethanol fuels made by Australian farmers and manufacturers to reduce motor vehicle emission deaths along with our chronic dependency on imported fuels – for which we pay our foreign overlords 10 times the amount that we sell our own indigenous oil reserves for, to buy back as refined product because all-but two of Australia’s neglected oil refineries have been left to shut down in the past two decades,” he said.
In addition to reflecting industry concerns of the consultation paper’s equal footing proposed for global and domestic biofuels producers, Mr Katter remained sceptical of the so-called “demand measures” policy announcement after abject failures to enforce state mandates legislated in New South Wales by Premier Morris Iemma to reduce emissions-related health impacts, and in Queensland through relentless advocacy by the Katter’s Australian Party State Parliamentarians.
“The foreign-owned fuel companies have treated this country with absolute contempt since the state ethanol mandates were legislated, so I’ll believe it when I see it – or is this just another publicity stunt as part of ‘governing by headline’ rather than governing for the people?” said Mr Katter.
“Any government that was governing for the good of the people would provide for all our domestic fuel needs from within Australia. And don’t talk to me about electric vehicles when all our solar panels come from China – who’ve had their own ethanol-fuel mandate for a decade now, after the global standouts such as Brazil, the United States, and India now rapidly expanding.
“And yet Australia is among the world’s biggest producers of grain and sugar from which we can sustainably make renewable biofuels from waste byproducts, and 20 per cent self-sufficient in oil reserves. So please excuse my rage, as an Australian, at the people in government offices on half-a-million dollars in cahoots with those elected to run our country into the ground, while feathering the nests of foreign multinationals and leaving our own farmers and manufacturers at their mercy.
“But the last thing we need right now is for any foreign ethanol producers to be given special access to our biofuels market, when Australia’s own growers and fuel producers need to be supported and protected. Any foreign access will spell disaster.”
