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

I rise to speak in the debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (2010 Measures No. 4) Bill 2010. The Daily Telegraph features on the front page, as well as on two other pages, articles on ‘Selling the farm’. I am very familiar with the dairy industry. All five of the processors were Australian owned, prior to deregulation. Now only one of the five is Australian owned. I would say that, probably by Christmas—most certainly in the new year—two-thirds, maybe three-quarters, of the Australian sugar industry will be in foreign hands. Prior to deregulation the sugar industry was entirely owned by Australian corporations and Australian farmers. Here we have the sale of a large number of water rights—‘Murray-Darling water licences sold in 2008-09; $55 million worth of water rights are being sold’—in other words, Australian farmland on a massive scale is being sold as we talk at present. Forty per cent, arguably over 50 per cent, of our meat-processing industry was entirely Australian owned until about 20 years ago.

It amazes me that very few people in this parliament seem to appreciate that we actually have a trade surplus, which is quite remarkable because we have hardly ever had a trade surplus in the last 20 or 30 years since Mr Keating started this ridiculous marketism, which is fine if someone else in the world is doing it. But since nobody else is, it is the act of an imbecile. It was undertaken by the Keating government and then carried on by the Liberal-National Party government and is, again, being continued on by the current ALP government.

With respect to the burning question of minerals, all six of our major mining companies—and I personally come out of the mining industry, not out of the cattle industry—were Australian owned: Normandy, North, BHP, Western Mining Corporation and Mount Isa Mines. Now they are all foreign owned. They account for about 80 per cent of Australia’s entire mineral production.

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