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

The plight of North Queensland is very much the creation of our federal and state governments. Professor Starck highlighted extensively on the national media the fact that, if you compare the amount of fishing done on the Australian coastline—and Australia has the longest and greatest coastline in the world—with that done by other countries, we harvest 30 times less. If all the other countries are dramatically overfishing, depleting their resource and destroying their environment, they must all be wrong and Australia must be right. It is a bit like our trade policy, where we are the only country on earth that has no tariffs and no subsidies. It is possible that the rest of the world is wrong and that Australia is right, but most certainly that is not my position.

Professor Starck spoke about acid sulphate. He tallied up all the acid sulphate incidents reported on websites throughout the world, and Australia comes up with many thousand times more acid sulphate problems than anywhere else in the world. I am familiar with this area because we mined copper through acid-leaching methods. But it neutralised so quickly that it was never very successful. If people understand that the ocean, as a base, is alkaline and neutralises the very mild acid that may come out of some of these areas, it is just a ridiculous proposition.

Australia has two unique tourism happenings to offer the world. We have the outback, but I think America can also claim that they have a very rugged outback, as we all saw in the Western movies in the days of our youth. But the Great Barrier Reef is unique—there are other reefs as good as it in the world, but none as extensive as, or better than or as accessible as the Great Barrier Reef—and we also have jungle. Many countries have jungles, but most of them have guerrillas—and I do not mean gorillas—running around in them, and they are not places where tourists are going or will want to go in the future. So we have these two unique attractions and they come together on the Queensland coastline between Cairns and Townsville. North and south of that paradise coast is not rainforest or jungle; it is fairly barren in the main. But that area between Cairns and Townsville has dense jungle sweeping down to the Great Barrier Reef, making it magnificent for tourism.

In the last 20 years, except for the development by the redoubtable Keith Williams—and who would ever want to go through what he has gone through with that development—no significant development has taken place on that entire coastline. Discretionary powers were given through the precautionary principle to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority so that they can arbitrarily make any judgement that they please. They do not actually make judgements against any of these areas; they just say, ‘You have to get a permit from us,’ and give you no decision. So you are strung out interminably and indefinitely without any decision whatsoever to help you. Quite apart from the ravages of GBRMPA, which have successfully stopped any development on the only unique, magnificent tourist attraction part of Australia, it is sad—but in a way I suppose predictable—that Steve Irwin died in the very dangerous environment of North Queensland, when it is also the most spectacularly beautiful environment in the world, with the coral reef and the dense rainforest only 20 minutes away. But there has not been one single significant tourist development in that area in 20 years.

In question time today I drew the attention of the House to the case of Booth v Yardley, which followed on from the case of Booth v Bosworth. It is an appalling situation when ordinary, average Australians go out and build up a giant lychee farm, a new industry for Australia—lychees are one of the most popular fruits in the world—and then find they cannot get rid of the flying foxes from their farms. Those of us who have lived in North Queensland for half a century or longer know that flying foxes have never been seen in such numbers. What attracts them to areas like Townsville and Charters Towers, which used to be barren areas where there were no trees, is the dense foliage that now exists as people have grown beautiful trees in their backyards and over big areas of land—and it is a similar situation in Ayr and Bowen. This has created an environment for the flying foxes which has enabled their numbers to dramatically increase. Whereas they used to be culled, as they were considered by the First Australians to be a delicacy, today North Queenslanders and Australians are not allowed to take them at all. They are not even allowed to remove them from their land. So we have the absolutely appalling situation in Charters Towers, Gordonvale and Cloncurry—and I do not know in how many other places in North Queensland—where people have 2,000 or 3,000 of these vermin in their backyards.

As I outlined in question time today, flying foxes carry SARS; hendra virus, which four people have contracted and died from; and the lyssavirus, which I think seven people have contracted and three have died from. Some six per cent of bats tested for this deadly lyssavirus tested positive—apart from salmonella and leptospirosis. So you could have 6,000 flying foxes in your backyard dropping their waste product out of the trees and onto the ground and on you. I always wear a hat when I visit the long-suffering Jackson family in Charters Towers because I am really scared of that stuff dropping on me and my getting one of these terrible diseases. When the Current Affairs program came up recently, six of those bats dropped out of the trees dead whilst we were filming. They dropped out of the trees dead because they had some terrible disease. Because their DNA is close to the DNA of Homo sapiens, almost all of those diseases are applicable to man.

These people have literally been forced out of their homes—in Cloncurry, Gordonvale, Charters Towers and so many other centres. What is being said here is: ‘We are going to protect these bats. You human beings can die.’ And I note that they are all North Australians. If it were happening in Brisbane, I bet there would be a different response from the state and federal governments. But we North Australians are dispensable, as we were in the last war, when we were given over to the enemy.

Let the rest of Australia reflect upon the fact that Northern Australia has all of the water—three-quarters of Australia’s water supply is located in the top quarter of our country. More than half—60 per cent—of our mineral wealth lies in the northern part of the continent, as do more than half of our coal reserves. So treat us as you will, but, when you do treat us so shabbily, just remember that you are damaging yourselves, because without those people being located there you would not have those industries. Those industries are fading and wilting at present.

I want to emphasise the enormous degree of ignorance on the part of so-called environmental scientists. A joke in North Queensland is that, whenever anyone asks, ‘What is an oxymoron?’ they are always told, ‘Environmental scientists.’ They then say, ‘Right, we now know what “oxymoron” means.’ We hear from them again and again that hard-hoofed animals are threatening the very delicate fabric of the Australian environment, so I have put $2,000 on the table—and I do so again today—for anyone who can drive from the outskirts of Townsville across to Mount Isa and sight 2,000 hard-hoofed animals. You will have seen 30,000 square kilometres—half the size of Tasmania—and you will not have seen 2,000 hard-hoofed animals. These people work from towering ignorance. (Time expired)

See this speech in context