Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Some people may want to become famous and be deeply appreciated by the people, such as John McEwen in Australia. In the United States ‘Teddy’ Theodore was famous for three things, one of which was that he broke up Rockefeller’s control of the oil industry. When I went to university, albeit briefly, we were taught in economics that, if there is a monopoly, supply and demand does not work and, if there is an oligopoly, supply and demand does not work either. Oligopoly means there are very few buyers or sellers. In this case, there are very few sellers: there are only four sellers in Australia and that is called an oligopoly. We have great free-traders on both sides of the House. The ALP has to come clean and say they were the champions of free trade. They started all of this rubbish. If they want to talk about economic principles, I wish they would read about it and acquire a little bit of knowledge. Maybe a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing in the case of people in this place.

Supply and demand determines price—read Paul Samuelson’s textbook Economicsonly when there is an infinite number of buyers and sellers. We have four sellers here. I do not speak from a lack of knowledge on this. When a colleague of mine—and I do not hesitate to say that he is a good friend—Neil Turner, in the Queensland state house, and I decided we had had enough and that we disagreed with the direction of the party leadership, we had discussions with Venezuelans. They said, ‘Don’t worry about the price.’ We said we would have to bring in a 30,000-tonne tanker and find, at that time, nearly $20 million, which would be difficult. They said, ‘Don’t worry about that. We will stoke you for two or three months, but we will not do that unless we have a guarantee from the Queensland government that there will be a minimum price because every time we send a tanker load to compete against the majors they drop the price and we are left with the petrol, regardless of the agreements with the people we distribute to.’

People just broke the agreements and would not take the petrol. Because of the fear that the majors would drop the price if anyone else tried to get into the ball game, what was needed was a minimum price. To bring the price of petrol down you needed a minimum price, but without that protection in the market, without some involvement by government in the marketplace, there is no way anyone is going to pay $30 million for a tanker load. What happened to John Newman on bringing in ethanol from Brazil? He lost literally millions of dollars. I supported the government in trying to stop Brazilian ethanol coming into Australia. Clearly, you can buy ethanol through the bowser in Brazil at 68c. When we say we have a free market operating in this country, why can we not get it here at 68c? I will tell you why: because we have an oligopoly. You just broke whatever power you had to restrain the majors.

Australia has been very unfair to the Fraser government, particularly to Doug Anthony, who put in place this protection to try to overcome the oligopoly situation. I would say that they did not go far enough, but the fact is that they made an effort. The current government and I regret to say here the opposition—and I applaud what they are attempting to do here—cannot fool around with the oil companies. It is like Woolworths and Coles. I am sorry: you can put whatever you like in the Trade Practices Commission but their power and control in this country are such that those laws will never be enforced. In fact, the antitrust legislation—

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