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

The aspirations of the Australian people are incorporated in the nation’s national anthem, and that is true of most countries. Our national anthem says we have ‘golden soil and wealth for toil’.  In North Queensland, when people sing that part of the national anthem, a lot of people burst out laughing because if there is one thing in this country that is true it is that the soil is not available to create wealth, no matter how hard you work. It has been taken away from the Australian people and it is said that it will never be utilised. The water of Australia has been taken away. That part of the water that is being used is being taken away as well. I think the last government probably decided on a 50 per cent cutback on the Murray-Darling, which is about 60 per cent of our agricultural production, and the current government appears to be going down exactly the same pathway.

I would like to speak positively, not about what we are closing down but about what we are opening up. I would like to concentrate on that today because I have spoken on the shortcomings many times, but I cannot help but refer to aluminium and coal, as I do invariably, because this nation’s economy is being carried by them. Iron ore has had a spike, yes, but that spike has vanished. But, if you look at the last seven or eight years, I think it is a fair call that the nation’s economy has been carried by coal and aluminium. Those two industries were created in my lifetime—not only in my lifetime but in my political lifetime. I am pretty close to my 35th year as a member of parliament and I was a very, very young man when the state government in Queensland decided to create those industries.

You must remember that in 1957 this country was an importer of coal. Between 1957 and 1966 my own home state of Queensland became the biggest exporter of coal of any state on earth. So how did we move from the whole nation being an importer of coal to having one state alone being the biggest exporting state on earth? Very great men, the Thiess brothers, put all of their personal fortunes into it. I do not think they had much left in the till, even though they had built most of the Snowy, done most of the coalmining in New South Wales and built half of Queensland. They did not have much left in the till because all of their money went into proving that we had giant coal reserves, and giant hard coking coal reserves, in Queensland. Bludging off their work—and I use the term with aforethought, and I can give you the reference books—Utah came in and went north and south of the Thiess holdings. They drilled and they secured deposits as well.

So we had these huge deposits in the late 1950s, but we had no way of developing them. We had no railway line, we had no port and we had no coal loaders. So there was nothing that Thiess or Utah could do. At this stage George Ishimura, effectively from Utah, and, more importantly, Thiess had tied down the markets in Japan. But what was the catalyst, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom? What was the catalyst?

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