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

I said the other day that everyone has been emphasising the negative side of this proposal, which is savings on the Murray-Darling. I have no wish to speak about that today. For the nation to continue to see three-quarters of its water resources completely unutilised while in the south-east corner the water resources are overutilised is incredible. It is quite staggering that this could continue. The debate is constantly centred on the negative aspect of the Murray-Darling instead of the positive aspects in Northern Australia.

Let me repeat: simply taking seven per cent of the Gulf run-off—I am not talking about the north-east run-off or the north west of Australia’s run-off; I am just talking about the Gulf run-off—will irrigate five per cent of the Gulf and mid-west, which is some two million hectares. There will be no substantial change to what you see if you fly over the Gulf in an aeroplane. There will be a few threads of green and a few pods of green. I would like to see a lot more of that.

We produce 9,000 litres per hectare of ethanol off sugar cane at 75c a litre, and that is not using the bagasse. There is a further return on the bagasse for electricity of another $2,000 million. But put those together and there is $16,000 million a year of income sitting out there for virtually no commercial outlay by individuals and no outlay much by government either. The Minister for the Environment and Water Resources has very generously and sensibly said that he will most certainly be looking at proposals in North Queensland, and we hope that those proposals will be taken forward.

There is report after report. Newsweek magazine from the United States says the first solution for CO is ethanol. On page 136 of Al Gore’s book, the first solution for CO is ethanol. George Bush’s first solution in his state of the union speech was ethanol. Where can we produce that ethanol with a tremendous benefit? Every hectare of sugar cane takes 72 tonnes of CO out of the atmosphere, but through ethanol it only puts back 13 tonnes of CO. So there are enormous benefits in the reduction of CO through what we are proposing here.

Heaven only knows, but Mr Theodore said: ‘I’ve had it up to here with this. I’m going down to take over Canberra and I’ll get some water development in Northern Australia,’ and he did. Unfortunately he ran into the Depression and the rest is history. Mr Menzies, Mr McEwen and Mr Bjelke-Petersen got as far Burdekin Falls, but that was all. It is only 50 or 60 kilometres from the coast. It is not really the development of any of these huge resources that we have in Australia.

We plead with the minister and with the government. They have raised the hope of Australians. They have created an environment of excitement and opportunity for the future for Australia. It is said again and again in writing the history of Australia that the three great achievements of this nation—funnily enough, unanimously—are the wheat stabilisation scheme, the Holden motorcar and the Snowy Mountains scheme. We have a chance to repeat the Snowy Mountains scheme but with no cost to government. Please, why is this not happening? We plead with the government of Australia. The minister has been good enough to come in for all of these debates, and we thank him once again for that. We will get an intelligent perspective, which we will not get unless he is here.

Let us be very specific: what are we talking about? I would have thought that if we are talking about savings then we are talking about underground poly piping, which makes enormous savings as far as irrigation goes. But I am not interested in the savings; I am interested in using the great resources which God has given this nation and using them effectively, which we are not doing at the present moment.

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