“Motorists are entitled to high-quality fuel, which helps to ensure cleaner emissions, more effective engine operation and reduced pollution,” Environment Minister Ian Campbell said.

Funding of $11.5 million has been committed to programs that will assess the effects of ethanol blends on car engines and urban air quality and the appropriateness of allowing the sale of 5% ethanol blends without a label.

Another $5.6 million will be used to develop a fuel-sampling program designed to ensure compliance with biofuel quality standards.

But Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, has said that the neither the Federal

Government nor the Opposition were doing enough to drive the development of the ethanol industry.

Beattie said both sides of federal politics were failing to push a national mandate for ethanol-petrol blends.

“The reason why I have tried to get a national mandate is because we have had car manufacturers who have put out nonsense stories about the damage to vehicles [from ethanol-blended fuels],” he told the Ethanol 2006 conference in Brisbane this week.

“There has been resistance from a range of other people in the oil companies. They have run stories to discredit ethanol.

“If the sugar industry had more political clout in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra than it does then most of these issues would have been resolved a long time ago.”

Ethanol in Queensland is produced overwhelmingly from sugar, but in other states it is usually produced from wheat. In the US it tends to be derived from corn.

The Queensland Government has been pushing the development of an ethanol industry as a way of providing cleaner fuels while helping the state’s struggling sugar sector.

Twelve months ago, the state had 49 service stations selling ethanol-blended fuels. Today it has 131.