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

I will be very brief, Minister. We have a place called the Millaa Millaa intersection in Far North Queensland, in the Atherton Tableland. We have had five deaths there in two months. It is very, very serious indeed. Even though we have now been going back and forth to the state officials for a considerable period of time, there has been no action. There have been five deaths in two months, and I think there have been 10 deaths over the past 18 months—but I would not be quoted on the second figure. Nearby, not far away at Tolga, there is another intersection which has been brought to attention by Peter Griffiths—at the Humpy there—which is extremely dangerous. People will be killed; there is no doubt about that. Regarding the widening of the agricultural access roads throughout the tablelands, Rose Sutton has done a lot of very good work on that. Once again, no work has been taking place, and someone is—or some people are—going to get killed there. There are two places—at Majors Creek, where the road comes into the Charters Towers-Townsville highway, and at the Kurrimine-Silkwood intersection with the main coastal highway—which need converging lanes as opposed to the current T-junctions or right-angle intersections.

A bigger and more strategic development is the Gulf Country of Australia, which, if you include the north-west minerals province, is the richest part of the country. It has most of Australia’s rainfall runoff and most of Australia’s water. It is rolling blacksoil plains, 400 or 500 kilometres wide and 1,000 kilometres in depth. It has mineral resources stretching from Georgetown right across to Mount Isa. But we cannot get into or out of that gulf or lower peninsula area—and I am pleased that the member for Leichhardt is here, because he is well aware of the problem—except if we were to come back down through Cairns, which is a disaster, and we are not allowed to do it anyway. We are not allowed to use the railway line and we are not allowed to cart cattle or mineral product down through Cairns at the moment.

How the hell do we get out? I will tell you how we get out. We have a port that is falling to pieces at Karumba—the concrete has almost completely gone; it is ceasing to exist as a port at the moment—or we go via Charters Towers, which is 500 kilometres from this area. That would mean carting ore, trying to get out through Townsville on a highway that is 50 years old, single-lane and built up. If you have an oncoming truck carrying ore or cattle and you are a caravan going north, God help you. You have an eight-foot-four on the left-hand side of the road, if you leave the road. We just had some 60 cattle, I am told, in a truck roll over on the weekend, again on this highway.

During the last wet season, we were completely cut off from the coastal highway—and I know you are well aware of that, Minister Albanese. No matter how much money we spend on it, we cannot make it all-weather. We appreciate the work of this government and the previous government in upgrading that highway, but we need the alternative route to get our product. All of Australia’s bananas are grown up there. More than half of Australia’s mangoes are grown up there. We lost $3 million—arguably $5 million—because we simply could not get out of North Queensland during the last wet season. The alternative route was not serviceable for the sort of product that we needed to get out. So that highway desperately needs to be upgraded, as does the port of Karumba. And we are not talking in either case about big money.

The government have done a wonderful job—and I pay them full tribute—on the North Australia clean energy corridor. They have given us reality so that we have been able to go to people. I understand that two major companies now have outlaid $20 million on building this transmission line. But we would never have got that far without the intervention of the government. I want to put on record my sincere appreciation. Along that corridor are a number of clean energy projects, but we desperately need a continued commitment from the government.

Finally, we have four low-level projects. We ask—and I have discussed this with you, Minister Albanese—to fast-track or more realistically accomplish a regional development program through moderate water utilisation projects at Richmond, Georgetown, Cloncurry and Normanton. That is an estimated 200 jobs per town, 7,000 hectares per town and an extra $100 million a year for the Australian economy. We do not really need money; we simply need an expedition by way of submission to the federal cabinet. We very much appreciate your help to date on both those projects, Minister, and we very much appreciate it in the immediate future.

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