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

Mr Deputy Speaker Somlyay, like me, you have been around politics for a long time and we have seen many people come and go, but it is interesting to see why they went. I said at the time that Mr Beattie launched these amalgamations that, if he were serious and he continued, Peter Beattie would be the most hated name in non-metropolitan Queensland’s history and it would remain the most hated name for a decade or more to come. That is what has emanated.

It is quite extraordinary for me, as a person involved in politics—in parliament for 30 years, but involved in politics for all of my life; Daddy before me, Grandaddy and Great-Grandaddy before that—that I have seldom seen a man that got himself so incredibly, universally hated in such a short period of time. Ironically enough, there was considerable hatred towards the coalition parties in Queensland for being so incredibly weak that a person as unpopular as him was given the opportunity to do such a dreadful job.

I read the Courier-Mail with great interest today. When we are burying somebody we say nice things—there is no point in kicking him while he is down, but there was nothing that they could say. There was not really a single thing that they could say, unless you consider getting people to drink their own sewage as an achievement. I would not have thought that I would be skiting about that as an achievement; I would have thought that was something I would keep very secret. Peter Beattie built a football stadium—as a great follower of rugby league, I appreciate that. I said to someone, ‘Unless you get your name in the history book for building a football stadium,’ and this person wryly observed, ‘Yes, you do,’ meaning if that is all you have done in 10 years then you almost certainly will find your way into the history books.

This man resigned because, sadly for him, he was universally hated whether you were in Brisbane where people have seen their gardens dying, in country Queensland where they have seen their right to have their own councils and many other services taken away from them over the last 10 years, in a place like Gympie where the Traveston dam decision treated the people with absolute contempt or in Innisfail where that brave little council fought their way through Cyclone Larry standing in the streets amongst all the appalling debris and heartbreak. They went in and sacked that council callously for really no reason at all. I think some internal Labor politics was the only explanation.

But as a reminder to all people in this place, when the Liberal Party, and the other party that runs along with them, decided on the IR legislation, I said: ‘You are removed from the people; you are a great distance from the people. If you were close to the people or you had really thought this out, you would have to realise this is a kamikaze act.’ To Mr Beattie I said, ‘If you are serious about proceeding with this, you will do untold damage to your party in the federal election.’ The federal Labor people in Queensland hated it, because he was going to deprive them of an opportunity to get a federal Labor government. Many of them were very worried about the IR laws and they saw death and destruction for them as a result of this man’s intransigence over this issue. He has resigned. Let me say that he did a very good job in Cyclone Larry. We are deeply appreciative and I will try to be positive and remember him for that.

The Beattie government decided that they were going to preach to the councils of Queensland. On those councils you will find the hardest working, most efficient people on the tablelands. At Mareeba, Atherton, Herberton, Ravenshoe and Malanda you will find the most efficient hardworking people. In the last week, I can remember George Kidner at about three functions—he is not getting paid for going to those functions. Joe Paronella presided over two or three functions. Carmel Silvestro worked all day on the mike for the gumboot-throwing contest in Tully. These people work like dogs for their local communities. They are intelligent, capable people. A lot of them are very successful businesspeople. Where would the tourism industry of Far North Queensland be without Mick Borzi? The highway leading to the airport is named after him and this is the way he gets repaid. He asked the Premier, ‘Do we have worries at Mareeba?’ The Premier said to him, ‘No, Mareeba is right, you won’t be amalgamated.’ So he relaxed. It is now very foolish to believe politicians’ promises. Over a long period of time, regardless of party, I have found they are not a very reliable yardstick at all.

The government cannot deliver the water services to south-east Queensland. One of the major reasons was that they closed down Wolffdene; the new supply of water was to come from Wolffdene. If you closed it down and doubled your population, you should have some other option up your sleeve. They closed it down with no other option up their sleeve. It was incredibly stupid and irresponsible.

I represent the richest mineral province on earth—$12,000 to $15,000 million of export earnings were going to Australia but, because all those companies are now foreign owned, the vast bulk goes overseas. All the same, it is the richest mineral province on earth. We cannot process the minerals because there is no development capacity electricity on the northern grid system. There are one million people, five or six per cent of Australians, living up in the area—it is not as though we are small. North Queensland is going to win the grand final in a couple of weeks time.

Some 18 of the 28 doctors, from the midwest gulf to Mount Isa, were migrants. They were not even migrants; they were just in Australia on various visas; they had not even become Australian citizens. When I had my heart attack, most of the 10 or 11 doctors I saw were from overseas. Here is a government that cannot produce doctors who can speak fluent English. It cannot deliver electricity, it cannot deliver water and it cannot deliver doctors. Land prices are spectacularly going through the roof, and the state government is announcing that they will put in footprints to restrict subdivisions. If you want to shoot up the price of land through the roof, then for heaven’s sake restrict subdivisions because that will do it magnificently! Instead of paying $120,000 for a piece of land, you will pay $200,000. Just how incredibly stupid is this government? Yet, when the people of Queensland were asked, they decided that they were better than the other mob. That does not rank the other mob very highly.

Those people decided that they would wipe out all those councils; they were shut down—giants of men like Mick Borzi. They were closing them down because they were incompetent and running inefficient shire councils. I could work out how much the rate increase was in all these shires in North Queensland that they are closing down and how much the tax income of the state government has increased. There is $43,000 million in GST alone and, of that, Queensland, with one-fifth of Australia’s population, would get somewhere in the vicinity of $9,000 million extra, just from GST, which dropped out of the sky for them. So they have had a massive increase in money and there has been a dramatic diminution in services.

This was a concept, but it really goes to the heart of your belief system. The previous speaker, Mr Laming, from the Liberal Party, was right when he said that there is a definite socialist bent in here. They really believe that government will run it all well for you—that is, public servants, centralised bureaucracies and people who have come out of university with great educations. This is the fundamental belief system that is going forward here: ‘Have a big, centralised bureaucracy instead of these drongo farmers, truck drivers and railway workers being on the local Malanda council, Tully council or wherever. No, we will have these great experts out of the universities—young geniuses—coming and helping us run our operations.’ Mr Deputy Speaker Somlyay, you smile, and so you should, because we have seen the corporations in Australia that have been run by them and the absolute disasters that have followed in their trail.

I am one of the few people in Australia who have had to draw up a constitution for local government. There were 28 communities being administered by the state government. I had a decision to make on the best way to deliver services to these communities—the Torres Strait Islands, Pormpuraaw up in the peninsula; very isolated communities. What is the best system that we could devise for the most efficient service delivery? Having given it great thought and deliberation, I decided that the best way was for the people themselves, at Pormpuraaw, Doomadgee, wherever, to do it, even though they have had no education and no experience whatsoever in administration—there are only white fellas administering everything for them. I still thought that it was the most efficient way to do service deliveries. I put that proposition to easily the most efficient government in Australian history. They agreed.

This country is surviving at the present moment on our minerals. We survive on three minerals: coal, aluminium and iron ore, in that order. The coal industry of Australia was created by the Queensland government, under Bjelke-Petersen. The aluminium industry of Australia was principally created by Bjelke-Petersen, and none other than Peter Beattie acknowledged this at the funeral service for Bjelke-Petersen, and yet this most efficient government in Australia decided that the most efficient and effective way to deliver services was to allow these people to deliver the services—people with no education and no administrative background. So Pormpuraaw would be given their own shire council.

A gentleman named Joseph Elu rang me and said he wanted a local authority area for Seisia. Seisia, for those of you who do not know, is the most northern community in Australia, on the mainland. It is right at the tip of Cape York. I said, ‘Seriously, Joseph, what are you ringing up about?’ He said, ‘What I am ringing up about is for Seisia to get a shire council.’ I said, ‘All 12 of you?’ There are 12 people living in Seisia. He said: ‘Don’t you tell lies, Minister. There are 23.’ He was adamant that there were 23 people living in Seisia. So he wanted a shire council for Seisia, with 23 people. This is the best part of the story: I decided, after two months of being driven crazy by Joseph Elu, that I would give Seisia, with 23 people, their own local government. Mr Beattie said that shires are not self-sustaining if there are under 5,000 people, and here was the most efficient government in Australian history—not me; these were all cabinet decisions—deciding that Seisia, with 23 people, should have its own local shire. Seisia now has—and they did not have these before—a beautiful big supermarket, a beautiful motel and a caravan park. Seisia is one of the most successful Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia—so much so that Joseph Elu now heads Indigenous Business Australia. It has been such a wonderful success story.

The honourable minister, Mr Hockey, in this place, has bought—and God bless him for doing so—a beautiful dairy farm up at Malanda, because it is really paradise up there, but so has Joseph Elu and the Seisia community. They are neighbours of the honourable minister, and very good neighbours at that. They have made enough money there to be able to buy a beautiful place where they can get away from the heat of Seisia and have a great holiday above Cairns in what is very much paradise. I am sure the minister would agree with me. So that is a remarkable success story.

On the other side of the coin, we have Mission Beach, one of the most beautiful places on earth for anyone who has been there. Two of our past ministers from this place have retired to Mission Beach. It has thick, verdant jungle right down to a massive, beautiful beach which is probably 100 metres wide, and you can see coral reef at low tide. Mission Beach is just magic, but it does not have a shire council. There are 7,000 people, in one of the most rapidly growing areas in Australia. Half of poor little Mission Beach is in one shire and half is in another shire. People have nowhere to tie up their boats—this is supposed to be one of the great tourist destinations of Australia, and there is nowhere to tie up a boat—and they cannot go for a swim because there is no aquatic centre or swimming pool there. Mission Beach has 7,000 people; Seisia now has 300—not 23 but 300—but Seisia this year is building a swimming pool.

If you are in control of your own destiny and you have the spirit of the people behind you in your local community—a lot of people here come from big cities, but I do not; I come from a small community—there is tremendous community spirit that has an energy that can be harnessed, and it can achieve great things for the local community. If people want to run their own affairs, even though there are only 23 of them in Seisia, for heaven’s sake, let them do it.

There are very good things I could say about the Labor opposition in this place, but there is still the strain of socialism there. The previous speaker was dead right that this decision reeks of that socialist mentality: ‘You people are not really capable of running your own affairs. We are the enlightened people that should be running everything for you.’ So we thank the opposition for coming to the party and opposing Mr Beattie on this. I think that Mr Beattie’s demise, because that is what it is, has been a result of the energies of a lot of people in this place, because they could see that their chances of winning government have been very seriously damaged by him. Unfortunately for the Labor Party, that damage will continue.

We want to sincerely thank the government and the Prime Minister on this issue, because right at the jump the mistake that had been made in Victoria was freely acknowledged, as was the damage that had been done to the people of Victoria. He also pointed out the extreme political damage that was then done to the Liberal government in the forthcoming election because these people will not forgive or forget. The Labor Party have made a very astute political decision in getting rid of the touchstone of the hatred.

We still have a situation out there. If this lady who has taken over or is about to take over Queensland wants to continue down this pathway, then make my day, the government can say, because right from the outset she will take the place of Peter Beattie and she will be the person responsible for this decision. So I say to the ALP: the odium has not gone away. The odium will be there, and if these amalgamations go through then the Labor Party will be punished for the next decade or more as a result of this decision. So we would plead with the Labor Party: do not think about anything else except politics and votes here. Realise that this man was on a huge amount of money; he was the king of Queensland; we saw him on the television every night—and he loved going on the television. Why did he suddenly decide to leave? Because everyone in Queensland was after his head, and particularly the Labor Party was after his head, because he had seriously damaged its chances of winning the next federal election.

I point out to the honourable opposition here that the problem has not gone away. We want a result, and if we do not get a result then there is going to be—do not listen to me; just ask the people of Queensland in any of these areas. I remind the opposition that there are six key seats in Queensland. If I were a Labor Party member—and I most certainly am not, but if I were—I would say that they would be my target seats. The chances of the Labor Party winning them now have been very seriously damaged, and that damage is still out there. So we would plead with the Labor Party to realise the political acumen of the government and follow it, and we thank the government for what they are doing tonight. (Time expired)

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