Why is the supply of E85 fuel so tightly controlled?

Last night I met up with the person who has the very first 2008-built MY08
Saab 9-3 BioPower car sold in Australia. That car has the capability to
run
on ethanol blend fuels up to 85 percent ethanol (aka E85), however I was
very amazed when he was telling about how E85 can't be purchased from the
small number of outlets that stock it around Australia without
'registering'
on a federal government database, and service stations that do have it
will
deliberately lie when you ask them about it if your vehicle is not
registered in this database!

The price of E85 at the outlet he buys from in Forrestville (Sydney) is
A$1.05 per litre at present (I guess it does vary a little over time). The
only reason I could think of for why it's being so tightly regulated is
that
there are exclusive agreements in place with Manildra Corp for supply of
the
ethanol going into the fuel mixture, and that the government has basically
removed it's excise (which accounts for a large degree of the much lower
price) as a 'sweetener' to big business and government departments to
kick-start the interest in high-concentration ethanol blend fuels in Oz.

Does anyone know any more about this?

Smacks immediately of an Australian federal government 'approved' cartel
arrangement with Manildra Corp!

That aside, the car is great to drive and compared to the ****e that comes
out of local manufacturers, it's much nicer. For $50k, I'd much rather
have
one of those than a Falcodore or Toyosan... Especially since they can run
on
fuel costing 1/3 less than normal petrol (which currently costs on average
about A$1.40 to A$1.60 per litre for 'regular' unleaded here in Sydney)!

Craig.
-- 
Craig's Saab C900 Page at      | Craig's Classic Saab Workshop - Sydney
.au
http://lios.apana.org.au/~c900
| http://www.classicsaab.net
and other
URL's 
Email: c900@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  | For Saab 99/C900/9000 Enthusiasts
World-Wide!
Alternate: saabonaut@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 | Web-forums, galleries, library, links,
etc.