Katter backs in farmers’ pre-Budget ethanol plea to fuel our future
6 May 2026: After spending half his 50-year political life fighting to secure a home-grown supply of cleaner and greener biofuels, Federal MP Bob Katter has backed in an historic alliance of agricultural heavyweights united behind a national ethanol mandate – to protect our health and enable our iconic feedstock industries to deliver greater fuel self-sufficiency – at the highest levels of government.
Following direct discussions with Canberra in the wake of yesterday’s joint plea by Australia’s peak grain and sugarcane representatives for sustainably produced ethanol-blended petrol to be mandated nationwide, the North Queensland MP called on the Federal Government to “provide reassurances that the long-overdue implementation of an enforced ethanol mandate is being considered at the highest levels of government” ahead of next week’s Budget, amid the world’s worst energy shock strangling global supply chains and crippling domestic industries.
“Ethanol and biodiesel production can be immediately scaled up within a year to extend our existing fuel stockpiles – instead of being shipped off to safeguard other countries’ fuel security because demand from the foreign oil giants for Australian-owned biofuels is still not growing even in the case of domestic supply disruptions and soaring prices,” said Mr Katter. “However, in just 10 years, sustainably Australian-grown and manufactured renewable ethanol could be supplying 10 per cent of Australia’s total domestic petrol requirements, alongside local biodiesel for another five per cent self-sufficiency if there was a biofuels mandate.”
The alliance of the National Farmers Federation, GrainGrowers, Australian Sugar Manufacturers and CaneGrowers behind a domestic biofuels mandate follows two decades of both the major and green parties’ rejection of seven of Mr Katter’s private members bills* since 2002 for sovereign biofuels security – with 200 (or one-fifth of all) speeches to Parliament referencing ethanol and biofuels about 1000 times since his 1993 election to the seat of Kennedy; and state laws for ethanol mandates moved by KAP MPs along with dozens more ethanol representations to the Queensland Parliament by Traeger MP Robbie Katter since 2012.
“Our laws have been laughed out of Parliament by every government this century,” said Mr Katter after repeated warnings of an inevitable fuel supply crisis facing an island nation left to become dependent on imports without future-proofing our critical fuel and food industries – including the Sovereign Fuel Security Bill 2022 drafted with crossbenchers in the pandemic-era Liberal-National government, for the new Labor Government to secure 80 per cent fuel sufficiency (by banning oil exports for local refining with biofuels) and reliable power and fertiliser inputs for vulnerable industrial and regional communities.
“Whilst two of the world’s ‘big-four’ export industries in Australian grain and sugar join everyday Australians screaming for greater fuel self-sufficiency – with no end in sight to the Middle East war shock on global supply chains – governments must act immediately to secure our biofuels future with primary producers and local manufacturers in the national interest, and expand domestic refining to include our own indigenous oil reserves sold offshore for a fraction of the price it costs us to buy back, from our foreign overlords, as 90 per cent of our refined fuel needs.”
Mr Katter was equally scathing of the commercially conflicted big oil and motoring groups who for years pushed back against ethanol-blended fuel mandates instituted in 2007 by the NSW Government, to prevent deaths from carcinogenic aromatics and tailpipe emissions that ethanol instead reduces – “which is why more than 60 countries have already moved to ethanol, without all their cars breaking down all over the place” and increased ethanol content to almost one-third of Brazil’s petrol; 20 per cent now mandated in India (five years ahead of national targets to cut oil imports, reduce emissions and support domestic agricultural industries); 15 per cent in the United States, and 10 per cent in China.
“So all the lies about engine incompatibility peddled through a complicit media, they can share the guilt of needless deaths of thousands of people in our big cities from small particle emissions,” said Mr Katter.
“And we will be moving our legislation once again, to hold every major party and greenie politician to account to the Australian people, as to why we’re one of the last countries on Earth – apart from New Zealand, Africa, and the oil-producing nations like Russia, South America and Venezuela – to future-proof our renewable biofuels self-sufficiency without even spending a cent on a mandate, as well as protecting our health and hip pockets, along with our iconic regional industries and communities.”
ENDS
* Following the Fuel Quality Standards (Renewable Content of Motor Vehicle Fuel) Amendment Bills put to the Australian Parliament as an Independent MP in 2002, 2005 and 2006, the Katter’s Australian Party MP further moved his Renewable Fuel Bills in 2013, 2016 and 2017, and the Sovereign Fuel Security Bill in 2022.
