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

The advice provided to me is that we are also talking here today in the debate on these tax bills about treasury bonds. I will stand corrected by the frontbench if I am wrong, although I do not think the frontbench is with us today. I see the problem in Australia today very clearly because I represent the mining sector in this parliament. The mining sector I represent is probably the biggest of any member of parliament in this place. It is certainly amongst the top three. Once upon a time, the government would provide a joint user facility, whether that was a power station, a railway line or a port. The finance for the joint user facility was provided by the government. We found in Queensland that this was a very lucrative experience. It may have been that we had very good government and we got it right. When we provided a facility for Gladstone, for example, it may have been that we got it right. When we provided the railway line to Mount Isa, it may have been that we got it right. When we provided the railway line back from Collinsville through areas such as Moranbah, it may have been that we got it right. I would not say that; I would say that the philosophy was right.

We have a situation where the Lady Annie phosphate project, which will be one of the biggest phosphate deposits in the world, has to find the money for a slurry pipeline or a railway line to get its product out. It has to find the money for a port. That port will be there for hundreds and hundreds of years. That port will service the people of Northern Australia for hundreds and hundreds of years, as the ports of Townsville, Gladstone and Brisbane have. Hundreds and hundreds of people utilise the benefits that flow from the construction of a port. To ask a single company and a single project to meet the entire cost of creating a port is ridiculous. Any government that would seriously advocate that as the regime and mechanism by which the country can move forward is being quite ludicrous.

I have to say in fairness to the current government that their rhetoric is very attractive. They have said, ‘We will provide $20,000 million for the provision of infrastructure.’ The last government did not have that policy at all. They had some political one-offs. The current government are quite right in criticising them. The incredible $600 million that went into the railway line from Adelaide to Darwin was a most extraordinary allocation of money. It was simply to rescue the South Australian Liberal government, which it failed to do. From my experience, because I am not going to act holier than thou, the governments in the eighties that I was an integral part of did those things, but I thought they were counterproductive. In the end, I thought that trying to buy votes was counterproductive. A classic example was in my own electorate where the government spent some $360 million in the election before last trying to get rid of me. I recorded one of my highest votes ever because people were insulted and offended by that. That $600 million was for a railway line that goes from nowhere to nowhere through the greatest desert on earth and there is not a single, solitary export item that I can think of that would go out through the port of Darwin, with the exception of uranium. But the amount of uranium going out could be contained in a space about a quarter of the size of this chamber. It is very valuable, but it is very small. One person could take it out in a truck.

We are being told that reducing this withholding tax for foreign corporations will somehow be good for Australia. My belief somehow is that it will be good for foreign corporations. Excuse my naivety but, after watching these sorts of things for 35 years, my cynical viewpoint is: who is getting the money? The last time we did something like this, the Liberal and National parties removed the capital gains tax on foreign corporations, so their hypocrisy in coming into this place howling and wailing about this measure is really quite extraordinary.

Capital gains tax was removed for foreign corporations by the last government. The ALP want to act holier than thou, but today they are doing exactly what the Liberals did. They give us great rhetoric about how they opposed it and how it is disgusting to give a free kick to foreign corporations—and then voted for it in both this House and the Senate, exactly the same as the Liberals are doing here. We have had great speech after speech condemning the government for giving a free kick to foreigners, and then they are voting for it. Is it any wonder that people hate politicians? Is it any wonder that we enjoy one of the lowest rankings of respect of any category of people in Australia?

At the time, I said: ‘Why are you doing this? Why would you give this extraordinary free kick to foreign corporations? Are you trying to encourage them to take over the Australian economy?’ Let me be very specific. I represent a mining area, and in fact for the first time in probably 20 years our traded balance of payments is in a surplus. We exported a greater value of goods than we imported for the first time in maybe 20 years, and that is because of an explosion of mineral prices. Base metals have gone up about 320 per cent and coal has gone up about 120 per cent. So we have suddenly skyrocketed through the roof with our traded exports, and yet our current account is at its worst level in Australian history and one of the worst levels of any country on earth. The Liberal government left us with a legacy of the worst balance of payments of maybe any country on earth. If you exclude the Third World countries, then we come in about last on that list.

How is it that your traded commodities can show a positive and yet your current account shows a negative? I will explain to you why, Mr Deputy Speaker. Look no further than our own company Xstrata, which is run by really wonderful people in Australia. I want to put that on the record. It is run by really wonderful people who everyone, without exception, has immense respect for. But Xstrata came in much against the advice of Vince Gauci and the board of slithering Sydney suits, as I call them—those clever people that run Australia, make all the decisions for Australia and are listened to in this place much more than any of you members of parliament are listened to. I tried to explain ethanol. I said, ‘Let’s say 20 members of parliament go in and give every logical reason why we should do it,’ and then one of these slithering Sydney suits goes into the room. Who do you think they are going to listen to? He is a big powerful head of—I don’t know—one of these banks or corporations.

There are the most extraordinary events in the Westpac bank. A lady there, on the figures in the paper, has made $93 million for herself in the last six years. The first bank she ran collapsed and the collapsing bank is going to be purchased as an asset by the bank she is now running, and I read in the papers how marvellous she was! She was described as ‘the happy dragon’. I do not mean to condemn the lady—I don’t even know the lady—but I can tell you that there is a culture out there that is extremely evil and extremely destructive for this country.

Let me go back to Xstrata. They were running at a profit—do not quote me on the figures. It was about a $40 million or $50 million profit they were running internationally and they had expenditure in Australia of about $1.5 thousand million. So on an expenditure of $1.5 thousand million they had this tiny narrow profit margin. So the hawks from overseas swooped and picked up Xstrata. What happened is that metal prices went up 350 per cent, so the $1.5 thousand million income suddenly became a $4.5 thousand million income. But all that stays in Australia is the $1.5 thousand million. The traded assets are great stuff. Australia is exporting all these minerals and making this huge amount of money, but it just comes in and goes straight overseas to the owners.

Basically, the six major mining companies in Australia were all Australian owned 15 years ago. The Keating government and, I regret to say, because I have very great respect for John Howard, the Howard government are responsible for seeing that all six of those mining companies are now predominantly overseas owned. So the huge profits and windfall wealth that should have come to this country never came to this country because this place supinely allowed every single one of those companies to be taken over by foreigners. And what we are seeing here today is a facilitation of more takeovers—exactly the same as the last government facilitated takeovers. When after three days of frustration I could not find a single logical reason why the capital gains tax was being removed, one of the advisers sheepishly—his conscience got to him—said, ‘Mr Katter, I must say that this was all done in the two-month period that the Coles takeover was in the pipeline.’ If you were going to take over Coles and you knew you were not going to suffer any capital gains tax, then that was an enormous incentive for a foreigner to take over Coles. If you were one of the people selling Coles then you were going to make enormous profits out of that decision.

The Packer empire was apparently manoeuvring in a similar manner at the time. Whether the media reports were fair to them or not I do not know, but I do not blame a person for trying to make a quid. Anyone who says they are not is a damned liar or a fool—one of the two. So I do not condemn those people for doing that, but I do condemn the people in this place, who should make the rules so that that personal profitability will result in a greater wealth for the Australian people. But our rules are working in exactly the opposite direction. People should really do a bit of homework before they come in here. The opposition spokesman came in here and he said, ‘We are the low-taxing party.’ The Liberal and National Party is the low-taxing party. Well, I would hate to see a high-taxing party!

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