Far North Queensland children will soon be kicking more goals through a generous donation from a local helicopter service.

Cairns-based Nautilus Aviation has been working with the AFL Cape York Foundation to distribute 100 footballs across northern Australia, with 17 Torres Strait Island schools some of those set to benefit.

Nautilus Aviation chief executive Aaron Finn said it was important to engage with island communities.

“We spend a lot of time on the islands and in the Northern Territory, and we link

communities with major centres,” Mr Finn said.

“We’re engaging on a daily basis with these communities.”

The commercial aviation company has a longstanding relationship with AFL Cape

York, including a strong focus on community engagement in Cape York and Torres Strait communities.

“Working in conjunction with AFL Cape York and AFL NT, we put their logos on the balls and supplied the kids with pumps as well.”

The donation is part of a push to maintain positive relationships with northern communities and involve more kids in sport.

“You find that you go out to these remote places and the kids have really old or

damaged balls because they don’t get a lot of access to new sporting equipment,” he said.

AFL Cape York general manager Rick Hanlon said he was grateful to Nautilus Aviation for their support.

“2023 was the first time any football code was able to get to every one of Tagai State

College’s 17 campuses across the Torres Strait Islands,” he said.

“AFL Cape York were able to run AFL programs at every campus.”

Mr Hanlon said the relationship between AFL Cape York and the Torres Strait Islands has grown exponentially in the last two to three years.

“This donation of footballs from Nautilus Aviation will further enhance that as we get the game into more locations,” he said.

The AFL Cape York team who go up to the islands have developed relationships and connections, and rolled out programs, across the Cape York Peninsula, Gulf Savannah, and the Torres Strait islands.

The Australian Sugar Milling Council (ASMC) has welcomed an announcement by Minister Bowen and Minister King for funding $14.1 million to establish an Australian sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) capability using domestic feedstock.

However, the claimed 7,400 jobs that will be created by 2030 will not eventuate without a well-resourced and considered national biofuels feedstock strategy. The reality is that without the use of Australian feedstock, the jobs potential of a biofuels industry in Australia is highly limited.

“While we welcome today’s announcements regarding oilseed-derived SAF, the thousands of jobs that cleaner, greener liquid aviation fuels are predicted to create will simply not materialise without a well- resourced and considered national biofuels feedstock strategy,” said ASMC CEO Ash Salardini.

ASMC accepts that Australian oilseeds are the lowest hanging fruit in terms of using domestic feedstock for a domestic biofuels capability, through diverting oilseeds destined for overseas biofuels production for use domestically.

Ash Salardini says that the challenge will be to assess the availability and accessibility of other identified feedstocks, including sugar and forestry products, to ensure they can tap into the opportunities in biofuels. This will require a focus on improving supporting infrastructure and supply chains, more flexible land-use planning provisions, and de-risking investments in activities such as the production of sugar-based bioethanol. This could be achieved through the establishment of a National Biofuels Feedstock Strategy.

“We have an emerging situation in Australia where bioethanol-based biofuel plants will be using Brazilian bioethanol made from Brazilian sugarcane before they ever use a drop of fuel produced in the Australian sugar industry. This would not translate to any jobs in regional Queensland beyond the hundred or so jobs created to run the biofuels refineries. We want this to be a future made in Queensland and Australia not Brazil,” said Mr Salardini.   

Sugar has been identified by the CSIRO and ARENA as a big opportunity at scale to produce biofuels in Australia, with sugar by-products alone having the potential to service close to 10% of the domestic SAF market. However, there is no clear pathway or plan to achieve this.

“We keep hearing how biofuels will be a game changer for the sugar industry, however, it is not clear how we can viably tap into this opportunity. A National Biofuels Feedstock Strategy can provide that pathway.

“We have a government who has an ambitious agenda on biofuels, an industry asking for a viable pathway to participate, and thousands of potential jobs for regional Queensland – This is a win-win-win situation so let’s make it happen,” concluded Mr Salardini.