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

The budget, and let me be positive first, was not entirely bereft of infrastructure—arguably, for the first time in 20 years. The current government—and we have to pay them credit for the NBN, which I have not the slightest doubt that the Liberal Party is intelligent enough, I hope, to continue with as they said they would—has the CopperString project in north-west Queensland. That is the greatest concentration of mineral wealth in the country. There are hundreds of millions of tonnes of iron ore and phosphate, as yet untouched. It has never been touched, in actual fact.

Quite apart from our strength, which is copper, silver, lead and zinc, the CopperString project was to open up the great mineral wealth of the north-west mineral province—the 'Carpentaria mineral province', if you like, because it goes over into the Northern Territory. But in a very enlightened act of the government's vision—and I must pay tribute to the then Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Kevin Rudd; to his vision and his government's vision—they would provide an energy highway throughout Australia, extending the current energy highway into north-west Queensland—it is 1,000 kilometres away from north-west Queensland at the present moment—into the Pilbara, the iron ore region in Western Australia, and into Olympic Dam. This would be a wonderful thing for Australia.

In a most extraordinary piece of mind-numbing stupidity, or of an almost a corrupt influence from the oil and gas companies, the Queensland ALP government refused to go ahead with the CopperString proposal. Even more extraordinary was the incoming government, which describes itself as a 'can-do' government. They most certainly 'can-do' jobs in; they removed 15,000 and have not created one! I thought that if they were in any way positive then the CopperString proposal will get the green light from the incoming LNP government, but it has not.

The $2.5 million for the giant Pentland project will take that power one-third of the way up to north-west Queensland. We do not require money from the government for the project but what we do require from the government is tangible evidence that they are in favour of the project. In my electorate, seven per cent of its water and two per cent of its land mass can feed 60 million people. I am quite staggered by remarks by people like Mr Carr, a minister in this government, that the population of Australia is too large. If there is ever a truism of history, Mr Carr, you should stop reading your Civil War books and read some intelligent books and you would see a consistent pattern of behaviour in world history—

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