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

I think there were other things that were played, but I will not go into that. We are in an invidious situation in non-big-city Australia. I am not saying rural Australia, because I represent the environs of Cairns, which is a big city of 250,000 people. I represent the environs, and they are going to be treated very, very shabbily, I can tell you. Because of their problem—with high mountains that just rise off the coastal plains straight into the clouds—we cannot get the sort of service delivery that can be easy in certain other situations. And we are not Robinson Crusoe in this. There are areas outside of Melbourne that are exactly the same, and there are most certainly areas surrounding Sydney that are in exactly the same situation as we are. When we get breakdowns in broadband, they will not be fixed. When there is a change in technology, Treasury will not give us the money to upgrade our technology. Whilst we applaud the government, as with many socialist endeavours in this place they are very long on aspiration and very low on delivery and on turning those aspirations into reality. We hope that we are proved wrong in this case.

I started this speech by making reference to the senator from Queensland who took a very courageous stand in opposing the sale of Telstra. I said to him, ‘If you continue with your opposition then we will applaud you, and you will be a great hero throughout Queensland.’ That would have been something he could have used in his speeches forever—that I said he would be a great hero if he opposed this legislation. I said, ‘If you don’t, you have raised our expectations and you will break our hearts.’ He broke our hearts. I do not give this speech to condemn him; at least he put up some sort of a fight, which is more than I can say for the other representatives of rural Australia in this place. In endorsing the legislation, all we can say is: we applaud you for your aspirations but the reality for us is that those sorts of aspirations have never been realised for us. We would plead with the government to, just for once, deliver upon their promises.

See this speech in context