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

I sit under a large picture of John McEwen. For those of you who have had the intelligence and intellectual curiosity to read my history of Australia you will see the pivotal role that McEwen played in the history of this country. No sooner had Bob Menzies become Prime Minister for the second time than he announced a revaluation of the pound. Jack McEwen two days later announced a devaluation of the pound. He was not leader of the Country Party in those days, but I think he was titular leader of the Country Party. Two weeks later the pound was devalued. In the first trial of strength Jack McEwen proved to be the person that was the more powerful one in the governing of Australia.

The party that I represent proudly carries the banner handed down from those people. We are the only party that carries that banner. The party that I represent has a direct line back to the Country Party that three times brought down the government by taking a stand for the people that they represented. On two occasions, I would argue, that was a battle over revaluation or devaluation. The National Party in this place sat back supinely and did nothing about the dollar being driven up by Peter Costello from 52c to over 90c, which halved the income for every single mining company in Australia. They had their income halved because the dollar had doubled in value. I hope the members of the opposition are not preening themselves, because that mob had 12 years and the ALP only had six years. But they were able to drive it up another 50 per cent in the six years that they were there, leaving, of course, mining on its knees in Australia.

Another body blow was the mining tax. I would agree with the previous speakers on the government side in saying that it had a disastrous and unexpected—in fairness to the government of the day—consequence. The Ernest Henry mine in Cloncurry—one of the four or five biggest copper mines in the country—immediately closed. The Treasurer, quite rightly, said , 'They're playing games,' and I quite rightly pointed out that it was not a marginal operation; it was a less than marginal operation. It was kept going to ensure the copper stream at Mount Isa kept going. If you cut off Cloncurry there is a question mark hanging over your copper operations in Mount Isa. Therein lay the very real, immediate and cold face problem that was created by the mining tax. I thank people in the two major unions, the AWU and the CFMEU in this area, who exerted tremendous pressure. I regret, obviously, that that pressure resulted in Kevin Rudd being thrown out as Prime Minister of Australia.

There is a curiosity in Australia. The newspapers and the media say, 'We have a trade surplus. Isn't this wonderful.' Well, it is. I would love my country always to have a trade surplus, and we really haven't had one for about 40 years—certainly 30 years. So this trade surplus is a magnificent breakthrough. But I would be far more interested in a current account surplus. I don't think anyone has ever heard that phrase before—'current account surplus'. We have a massive current account deficit. In fact, this country, every year becomes five per cent poorer—in the money going out and the money coming in there is a five per cent deficit. So each year Australia becomes poorer. If you are a person operating a business the business is going backwards if each year you are making a five per cent loss. That is the situation in Australia. Each year we make a five per cent loss. The debt is just accumulating, worse and worse and worse, the greater the pile of debt.

Our curiosity should be piqued. How can you can have a trade surplus but a current account deficit? The trade surplus comes from the massive increase in coal and iron ore sales overseas—and now, to some degree, gas. I might mention aluminium, copper, silver, lead and zinc. But the massive production in these areas has resulted in us getting a trade surplus. Agriculture counts for nothing. In 1990 the world's greatest treasurer, Mr Keating, deregulated the wool industry. Wool was bigger than coal, but Mr Keating—with his clever deregulation, which was followed by the LNP, who deregulated every other industry in Australia—completely wrecked the wool industry, as you would be well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott.

Why have we got this current account deficit when we have this huge amount of money in from coal, iron ore, gold, aluminium and gas? It is because it is all foreign owned. The money comes into Australia and then just boomerangs back out again, because we do not own BHP. There are those who will argue that we still have an Australian majority shareholding. I would argue that we do not. In any event, BHP in many areas is in partnership with other people, and that most certainly waters down any Australian ownership. We can thank Marius Kloppers, I think, for keeping BHP in Australia, but I do not know for how much longer. Mount Isa Mines was Australian owned, BHP was Australian owned, Western Mining Corporation was Australian owned, Normandy was Australian owned and CRA—whilst it was not Australian owned—most certainly was an Australian-run company. CRA now does not exist. Conzinc Riotinto Australia is now Rio Tinto, a foreign-owned corporation; Normandy has broken up and is completely foreign owned; Western Mining Corporation has broken up and is completely foreign owned; Mount Isa Mines is completely foreign owned; and BHP is predominantly foreign owned. But 83 per cent of the mineral resources of this country are now foreign owned. So if you want to look for the answer as to why our current account deficit is the way that it is—each year 50 or 60 thousand million dollars is bleeding each and every year. To put that in perspective, when the much-maligned Fraser government left office, I think the current account deficit was around two or three thousand million. I say 'much maligned' because I think it was a very unfairly maligned government. They held the dollar on restraint and they restricted down the value of the dollar. God bless them.

The current account will get worse and worse and worse, because Australia does not own anything. We do not own any of the dairy factories. We do not own any of the sugar mills. We do not own any of the mining companies. We do not own any of the gas resources. What the hell do we own? What is left in this country that we do own? I think it is just very, very little. The reason for the current account is: we are a country that is completely out of step with the rest of the world. I enjoy coming into this place so much because I can say, 'Yes, I am out of step with everybody in this place'—there is no doubt about that—but I happen to be in step with the rest of the world. The rest of the world has interest rates of 0.2 per cent. The OECD average for the last three years, the last time I looked, was 0.2 per cent. The last time I looked we were on 2.7 per cent. If you are on 2.7 and the rest of the world is on 0.2, everyone is going to be putting their money into Australian dollars. And when they do, the dollar goes through the roof. You do not have to be Albert Einstein to work this out. That has been the death knell of agriculture in this country. Very few people are aware that we are not a mining country anymore. A mining country is a country that digs it up out of the ground and sells the metal. We are not a mining country; we do not do that. We dig it out of the ground and we sell the ground. We are a quarrying country. There is a huge difference.

I worked in the lead smelter at Mount Isa mines, and there were many more people working in the processing plant than working underground. So the mining part of it—or the quarrying part if you like—was small compared with the processing element. And the processing element is lost to us. The cost of gas is one thing. Fertiliser manufacturer Incitec are watching their gas prices go from $2 to $3 to $9.50. It is a diammonium phosphate plant. Ammonia is what you get from gas, and gas prices have gone up 300 per cent in the space of two years. Things are going to be very, very difficult for them. We saw the stupidity of the ALP government in Queensland in putting a gas-fired power station into Mount Isa to supply all of our mines, and our great fertiliser plant, the biggest in Australia at Mount Isa Mines—was put on gas-fired electricity, which has put the price through the roof. In any event, the reason that we secured the aluminium industry in Australia was that the Queensland government built the biggest power station in the world at Gladstone. It is state of the art, state of the technology, and the biggest—economies of scale. But the important issue was that it was fuelled on free coal. We had a reserve resource policy.

I would plead with the current government to do what the West Australian Liberal government has done and have a reserve resource policy with gas so that they can have cheap electricity. When we had the super-cheap electricity in Queensland, we got the aluminium industry. Tasmania did the same with the hydroelectricity. We had super-cheap electricity, so we got an aluminium industry.

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