Some of you may already be aware of the huge media scare campaign against ethanol-blended petrol in Australia. Here is a great story that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Monday April 28 2003:
--------------------------------------------- Ethanol fuel line has motorists labouring under misapprehension By Paul Sheehan April 28 2003 A Few days before Christmas last year, on December 18, this newspaper published a consumer horror story on the front page. It unleashed a barrage of controversy about the dangers of buying cheap petrol, especially petrol with high levels of ethanol. Good story. Pity it wasn't true. It was about a motorist who saved a few dollars buying cheap petrol only to be been hit with a repair bill of $746.90 because of extensive engine damage caused by contaminated fuel, in this case, it was claimed, excessive amounts of ethanol. But the motor mechanic upon whose words the story hung, Neil Streeting, says everything in the story was wrong. "I'm still really angry," he told me last week. "I never claimed that I had repaired 10 cars damaged by ethanol. I never said anything like that. What I told the SMH about an engine being wrecked actually related to another vehicle damaged by petrol contaminated by kerosene over a year ago." The problem was not ethanol, Streeting said, but unscrupulous service station operators who sold petrol containing a variety of cheap substitutes for petrol: "I've got nothing against ethanol. It's a good fuel. It's good for the country." Why would ethanol be good for the country? Because - and we now enter terrain of considerable debate - if Australia were to use petrol blended with up to 10 per cent ethanol (the maximum level at which everyone, including the oil industry, is comfortable), it would cut our oil imports, boost the rural economy (which produces ethanol, primarily from grain), reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions and cut the amount of pollutants caused by the additives in petrol. All good, and all up for debate, but the bad publicity surrounding ethanol has been caused by something else: unscrupulous service station operators selling petrol contaminated with cheap substitutes, or motorists not being told they were buying petrol that is blended with up to 20 per cent ethanol. These are quite separate issues. Meanwhile, the ethanol industry is hemorrhaging. "It was all a political set-up," Streeting told me. "I'm just a nobody in workerland, but the next thing I knew I was in the middle of a political firestorm. It took me a while to work it out, but I realised this was all about Labor bashing the Liberals." Streeting's media adventure began when he got a call from the office of a federal Labor MP in Sydney asking if he'd encountered problems caused by contaminated fuel. "I told her, 'Yes, I'm working on a car right now that has been damaged by contaminated fuel.' I never mentioned the word 'ethanol'. She asked if I would talk to the media. Like a dickhead I said yes. I got a call from the Herald within an hour." As readers would expect, when the Herald later learnt there were problems with the story, it investigated the matter, published a correction, and assigned two senior journalists to clean up the mess. But the story had taken on a life of its own. Politicians had rushed in, and other dubious stories found their way into print and onto the airwaves. On January 11, The Daily Telegraph ran a story under the headline: "Costs of ethanol: $800 in repairs and four days' pay". Even though the headline and the opening of the story flatly blamed ethanol, the story itself contained absolutely nothing to back up the claim: "Mr Whalan fears he is the latest victim of ethanol-laced unleaded petrol ... While he has not conducted tests on the petrol in his tank, Mr Whalan's mechanic suspects a high ethanol content could be to blame ... 'Up until it gets tested we can't say for sure,' said [mechanic] Rocco Zinghini." In other words, shoot first, ask questions later. Whalan's petrol was later tested. The Australian Biofuels Association, the ethanol lobby group which takes such stories very seriously, found that the test showed no ethanol was in the petrol. Not one word of apology or correction was published by The Daily Telegraph. But the way this story unfolded was not really about consumers. It was about politics. On the same day the Herald's ethanol horror story ran, Labor's shadow treasurer, Bob McMullan, gave a press briefing at which he thundered: "Today's further news about specific cases of damage to engines ... as a result of excessive ethanol in petrol sends one very clear message. John Howard should go down on his knees and apologise to ... the hundreds of thousands of other motorists in Sydney who are paying hundreds, and, in some cases, thousands of dollars to repair their cars, because John Howard will not allow the Government to do what every independent adviser says they should do, which is set a 10 per cent limit on ethanol in petrol ... "We have spoken to a number of mechanics ... More than half a dozen tell the same story as the gentleman in The Sydney Morning Herald this morning - they speak of cars coming in with damage to engines and reduced performance as a result of purchasing petrol with an excess of ethanol. We have been out and had the petrol tested on a number of occasions and it is clear that the cause on those occasions ... was ethanol ..." The tests? They were two complaints from constituents who had written to two Labor MPs in Sydney, both claiming that petrol with 17 per cent ethanol had caused engine damage. But Bob Gordon, who runs the Biofuels Association, says he's still waiting to see those tests, four months later. Labor has never been dishonest about where this story came from: it came from the Labor Party. And the media exercise worked beautifully, especially the repeated references to the Manildra group - which produces most of Australia's ethanol - being a "major Liberal Party donor". That was the real target. As for the Australian ethanol industry, it is lying by the side of the road, bleeding, the victim of a hit and run. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get A Free Psychic Reading! 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