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

I second the motion and I exercise my right to speak now. Some 14,500 public servants have been sacked in Queensland in the space of about seven months, and it is far from over. I belonged to the most efficient government ever. No-one has ever denied that the Bjelke-Petersen government was the most efficient economic performing government in Australian history. In its lifetime, it created the coal and aluminium industries, which carried this nation for some 25 years. The iron ore industry is now also carrying the nation, but those two industries carried it for 25 years and they were established by that government. I will tell you something, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Symon: it was established by huge debt. We were the most indebted government in Australian history. No one will ever have the debt that we had.

To give an example of what we did to get that debt, we borrowed $1,000 million to build a railway line from nowhere to nowhere because we believed that, if we built that railway line, the coalmines would be able to open up and export coal overseas. This was a very radical proposal because Australia in 1959 was a coal-importing country. We were not a coal-exporting country, so the idea that we should export coal was radical. We spent $1,000 million, which was about a quarter of our entire budget. Was it a good decision? That railway did not service just Les Thiess, who said, 'If you build me a railway line, I'll open a coalmine.' It did not serve just Utah, who said, 'If you build us a railway line, we'll give you a coalmine.' There were 30 major mines using that railway line. Each year, we made $850 million profit off that line and we made further profit on the port.

The Liberals have a rather crude, simplistic approach to economics. They believe economics is about cutting government spending. Would that it were that simple. If the Liberals had had control of Queensland, there would have been no coal industry and there would have been no aluminium industry, because they would not have built, as we did, a giant power station for which there were no customers in the belief that there would be if we built infrastructure. Most people in this House think of infrastructure as whirligigs and pleasure domes in the big cities. Heaven knows the Premier of Queensland is the king of all whirligigs and pleasure domes! He is the king of debt as well, because he increased the debt of the Brisbane City Council by 60 per cent and he increased their taxation by 60 per cent. We can drive through Brisbane and see all the bicycles he is responsible for. There are tens of thousands of bicycles that I have never seen anyone riding around on in my life. Is it any wonder that his party members are fleeing at the moment?

I also belonged to a government with very great pride in the fact that we never sacked any public servants. Yes, there was confrontation—a particular group of people switched the lights out in Brisbane. But except for that incident, which concerned 200 people, we never sacked anyone. On the railways, I am very proud to say because I had a railway electorate, in 1979 there were 22,000 people and in 1989 there were 21,000, even though we had instituted computerisation, which did away with 4,000 or 5,000 jobs in that period. We had the same number in 1979 that we had in 1989. But the great socialist party came in, and in seven years they took the numbers from 21,000 down to 12,000. They were not allowed up on the dais when 10,000 people marched in Brisbane. They were not allowed up on the dais because our trade union leaders are not hypocrites. They knew that they were the people who sacked half the railway workers in Queensland and broke the hearts of many people.

I conclude on this note: Anthea, a lovely lady who was one of our nurses, has no job now. I asked her, 'Can you get a job?' She said, 'No, I can't leave town because I owe money on my house.' I said, 'Can you get a job in town?' She said, 'There are no jobs for nurses in Charters Towers.' I asked, 'What will you do?' She did not have a tear in her eye and her voice did not waver. She said, 'I've got three children, Bob, and I don't know—I don't know.' (Time expired)

See this speech in context