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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am talking about our retirees. They have been hit with an extra $2,000 for insurance, they have been hit with an extra $3,000 for electricity, they have been hit with an extra $1,000 a year in rates, they have been hit with an extra $1,000 a year because of the current Labor government's reductions in the subsidy for prescriptions and they have been hit with an extra $2,000 a year on average for dental care because, if you have toothache in Queensland, the waiting list is over two years, so if you have to go to the dentist you have to pay whatever the dentist charges you. If you add those figures up I do not know what it comes to, but I would say it is in excess of $10,000. So it was $35,000 prior to the marvels and wonders of the free market system perpetrated upon us by Mr Keating and his successor in crime, Mr Costello, and we have taken $10,000 from these poor people. Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not want you to get upset because we are giving them $350 back! Through our incompetence we took $10,000 a year off them, but now we are going to very generously give them $350 back, just before the election.

Please excuse the people of Australia for being cynical. Please excuse the people of Australia for loathing and detesting politicians. When I say we are a great and wealthy country, I bear in mind that half of our electricity production in Queensland came from the Gladstone power station and that the power station was fuelled with free coal because we kept some of that coal for the people of Queensland. The Liberal federal government and the Labor federal government gave all of our gas away and reserved no gas for the Australian people. They have reserved no coal for the Australian people. They have let that gas go for nothing—and I fought against giving away the coal seam gas. There should be money in the till to pay for these pensions. There should be money in the till to increase the pension, not give them a meagre $350. Good on the government for giving $350 to retired couples, but I am saying that this should be a wealthy country.

You deregulated the wool industry and destroyed it, so you had no money coming in from there. You let the gas go, to be sold to foreigners for nothing, so you have no money coming in from the gas industry. We are the only country on earth that refuses to introduce an ethanol industry. In the last three months, China has announced ethanol, the United Kingdom has announced ethanol, Japan has announced ethanol and India has announced ethanol. That leaves ours as the only significant economy on earth now that does not have ethanol. All the European countries already have ethanol.

All of the Americas already have ethanol. The United States is the biggest producer of ethanol in the world, and, within five years, the United States will not be sending any money to the Middle East at all; they will be entirely self-sufficient. There is $20,000 million that should be staying in Australia. It should be yielding for this government or any future government—state, federal and local—some $7,000 million a year in tax revenue. But that $7,000 million a year is not there because you do not have an ethanol industry. You are buying your oil from the Middle East. You are sending our money overseas.

There is a massive importation of food into this country. Last time I looked, we spent $10,000 million a year on importing food, representing almost one-third of our food requirements. We are now buying almost all of our motor cars from overseas. That industry was generating $2,000 or $3,000 million in taxation, which should have been going to retirees. All of this money should be there. The destruction of manufacturing has cost Australia $20,000 million in tax revenue.

Mr Deputy Speaker, in your own state, where we should not be importing timber—

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