Bob Katter

KENNEDY MP, Bob Katter, has written to the the Minister for Transport, Hon Catherine King, and the Minister for Industry and Science, Ed Husic today where he requested an immediate 18-month suspension of the AdBlue law which requires trucks and heavy vehicles to drive on the roads.

His letters come after the Western Roads Federation^[i] issued a warning to the Federal Government of another impending national AdBlue shortage.

The National Farmers Federation also weighed in, requesting the Federal Government tap into the $500 million National Reconstruction Fund to support the manufacture and supply of urea. Mr Katter labelled the idea short-sighted given the enormous price of gas for producers, which was the final nail in the coffin for Incitec Pivot’s urea factory due to shut up shop in December this year. 

“AdBlue is urea which is an ammonia nitrate natural gas. It will not matter how many people put their hands up to produce it – unless the Government can bring down the price of gas long term, it won’t be a survivable industry,” he said.

“We have the highest priced natural gas in the world. No one is going to produce urea in Australia, and this is the concept that is hard for an ordinary intelligent thinking person to understand because it is so unbelievable.

“There is a law in this country that ensures every truck in Australia will go off the road if they do not provide a constant, affordable supply of AdBlue. But the Federal Government have no intention of doing anything about it because they are driven by ideology, and this overrides common sense.

“The regulations must be removed for a least 18 months and in that time, we must return to Reserve Resource Policy like every other major western country. The world is not going to come to an end if that is done.

“To use Government money to attract more producers is enormously illogical. With the free market and all its fang and claw, all our gas was swiftly sold off overseas for around 6c a unit. We Australians now buy it back at $16 a unit. Reserve Resource Policy will bring the price of gas down and make the industry profitable, long term.

“So now we are in this situation where food is going up, fuel is going up, fertiliser is going up, electricity is going up. If the AdBlue dries up, the whole country will be in dire straits, not just the farmers or truckies. The Government must act to eliminate this utterly stupid piece of legislation.

“Come Christmas this year, Incitec Pivot will cease operating their Gibson Island facility and we will be in the same position we were at Christmas time last year!”

Mr Katter said that Reserve Resource Policy would solve the issue long term, but State Governments needed to also rubber stamp gas projects that are under development and release the gas immediately for domestic use to bring down costs in the short term.

“It seems to me that the answers are just sitting there but the interest in serving the tyrannical monopolists is more important than providing solutions that keep down costs for our farmers, producers, and the public.

“God forbid they do something sensible like introduce ethanol. If you put ethanol in your tank and take the cancer-inducing aromatics out of petrol, you would be dramatically reducing the CO² small particle problems and the carcinogenic problems that exist with petrol at the current moment.

“You might be a bit worse off with your diesel, but you’ll be a hell of a lot better off overall with the heath environmental benefits,” Mr Katter said. 



-ENDS-

  [i] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-04/adblue-fears-with-australian-manufacturing-to-cease/101197454