Mr. Eddie Burke:

I will make a general point. I am afraid it will not answer the Senator's question. The alternative to what we are doing would have been a lot worse, so I think the consequences for all societies across the globe of not doing this would be worse.

The issue of batteries comes within the remit of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, not our Department. I take the general point Senator Craughwell makes that there may be consequences for certain groups of people or certain locations around the world of actions taken in this part of the world. I cannot answer that for him. All I can say about the crops and so on is that there is now a much greater awareness, which I mentioned earlier, of the life cycle of biofuels and a move away from the type of practice the Senator talks about whereby we affect groups of people in other parts of the world in order that we can fuel cars on this side of the world. I have heard stories and seen some of the reports about where the batteries are sourced and how the material is mined and the circumstances surrounding that, but I do not have an answer to the Senator's question.