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

I am quite fascinated by the government of Australia. There is a new book out, The Rise and Fall of Australia, by Nick Bryant. He said he got very worried about this country when, on his second day in Australia, he was taken to the cliffs of Sydney. There was a big sign up next to the cliff, which is 80 feet high, saying, 'Anyone who jumps off this cliff will be fined $150.' He said, 'I had serious worries about what sort of government we had in this country that I had come to.' The book is a very interesting book.

We live in a country that will have no manufacturing base. Every report that I have seen says that when the three motor vehicle companies close 72 per cent of Australia's manufacturing base will go down with them. We have already lost most of our manufacturing but if we take another 72 per cent out we will live in a country that will have no ability to produce anything much at all.

In the agricultural sector, as I have said on many occasions in this place, within seven years this country will become a net importer of food. No-one believes me but anyone can go down and get the figures. There has been an increase in imports over the last 10 years of 125 per cent. You can pick whatever starting point you want. There has been a 125 per cent increase in imports and a 28 per cent increase in exports. Clearly the country wants to become a net importer of food.

Someone has some great idea that we are going to build all these dams in North Queensland and produce all this food. The farms that are on the dams that are there are closing down. They cannot make a quid. They are seeking subdivision in all cases. So you have no manufacturing base, a collapsing agricultural base, and the party is over for coal. Indonesia is now the biggest exporter of coal in the world. We are yet to see Mongolia come on stream; that will happen over the next two years. There will be a massive production of coal in Mongolia when the railway line is completed at the end of next year.

So where are we going to get our jobs from? Where are we going to get our income from in this country? We imported $1,000 million worth of oil 12 years ago. Now we import $25,000 million worth of petrol. Where is this money going to come from? Where is this $16,000 million you are going to need to buy your cars from overseas? Where is that money going to come from? Where is the $25,000 million going to come from to buy all your petrol from overseas?

I can tell you that it is not going to come from agriculture. That is going down. It is not going to come from manufacturing. That is completely collapsing. It is not going to come from mining, because what you have now is what you have got. There is one more iron ore mine to come on stream, and then nothing will be happening in this country in mining. You can talk about the Galilee Basin. I represent the Galilee Basin. I can scream with frustration, but there has not been a rock moved into position to start coalmining in the Galilee Basin. In any event, it is 320 kilometres from the sea.

There are 180,000 new jobs created every year in Australia. There are 300,000 new jobseekers every year in Australia looking for those jobs. For some reason that I simply cannot understand, this government—as have successive governments—will bring 500,000 people in. Hold on! You have 300,000 jobseekers and 500,000 people coming into the country and you only have 180,000 new jobs. I hope you have a lot of money banked up in welfare payments, because you have another 100,000 coming down the line when the motor vehicle industry closes. And there is a multiplier effect of three. For every job you take out another three will be taken out of the economy. I am rather interested to see where you are going to get the money from.

For the first time ever I have been a Cassandra in this place. I have cried out, again and again, 'Don't you see that your country will be left with nothing? Agriculture is collapsing, manufacturing is vanishing.' And you may say, 'Well, what can you do about it?' I am not going to canvass all of the issues; I am going to confine myself, as I should, to the motor vehicle industry. I live 5,000 kilometres away from the motor vehicle industry, but I would like to think that I am an Australian.

When the first Holdens became available for sale in Queensland—I think it was the first 100—my daddy bought one. He was determined to be one of the first owners. He would have liked to be the first but he was only one of the first. He kept walking around the car saying, 'This is Australian. We built this car. Look at the clearance. Look at the size; see how many people you can fit in it. It is the cheapest car on the market in Australia. This car is fabulous!'

My father was so excited. Way up there in the middle of nowhere in Cloncurry he was so excited that his country could build a motorcar. In my book, An Incredible Race of People: A Passionate History of Australia, over the last century, Sir Laurence Hartnett was one of the great heroes. There were seven or eight others including Essington Lewis, who founded the steel industry in Australia. The steel industry will close down, of course; it will go down the chute with the car industry. It will be gone.

You may ask: what do you do about this? Where did the problem come from? I will tell you where the problem came from. In this country 1987, 86 per cent of the motor vehicles were Australian made. So what the hell happened here? I will tell you what the hell happened: Mr Keating happened. He announced that he was cutting in half the tariffs on motor vehicles. And, for reasons best know to himself, he came in and did the right thing: he allowed the dollar to free float. It went down to 49c, and I said, 'God bless Mr Keating. He's my hero. The dollar has come down to 49c.' For unknown reasons he then started to prop it up through the bloody roof.

Mr Costello did exactly the same. Mr Costello came in and free floated the dollar. It went down to 51c, where it should be, of course. If the dollar free floated to 49c under Keating and 41c under Costello, I dare say that is where it should be. But Mr Keating doubled the dollar. I will not go into how that was done, but everyone knows that the control of the dollar really comes from the Reserve Bank, and the government controls who is on the Reserve Bank and what their policies will be. Any government does.

In Australia, we have gone from 86 per cent of motor vehicles being Australian made to 19 per cent. I will tell a quick story. I have only been overseas once and it was a quick ethanol tour. Louis owned the luxury car service in Sao Paolo that the Australian government uses. I said, 'Louis, this is an Australian car.' He said, 'I always buy Holden Caprices, but this is the last one I would buy.' At the time I think the figure was $36,000. He said, 'I bought my fleet for $36,000 per car.' He said, 'The General Motors Brazilian equivalent is not as good a car, in my opinion, and it is a little bit cheaper, but I've always bought Holden because I think they are really good cars.' But he said it was the last one he would ever buy. I asked him: 'Why, in the year of our Lord 2006'—or whatever it was—will it be the last car you buy?' He said, 'Because the dollar has doubled and it's $72,000 now and it is only $32,000 to buy the Brazilian equivalent.' That is the profound effect of the dollar.

Then there is the issue of interest rates being 1,000 per cent higher than the rest of the world. Anyone can go to the library and ask them, but the average interest rate for the rest of the world is 0.27 per cent. The average interest rate in Australia is 2.8 per cent. That is a 1,000 per cent difference. I was in charge of the State Bank in Queensland. If there was a 50 per cent difference I would have had the CEO in and carp at him. If there was a 100 per cent difference, I would sack him. If there was a 1,000 per cent difference, I would seek the highest building in Brisbane and jump off it. But it does not worry the government that Australia is a 1,000 per cent out of step with our competitors.

The tariffs were 50 per cent in the mid-1980s when Mr Keating started and then the Liberals finished off the job—with the complete removal of tariffs. So we remain the only country without ethanol. We are the only country with interest rates 1,000 per cent higher than the rest of the world. We are the only country in the world without any subsidy support for farming. That is fine. That is a good idea; I agree with it. But, when the rest of the world's farmers are getting 40 per cent of their income from their government and our farmers are getting no income from the government, I do not hold out too much hope for our farmers.

I will climb back to the very interesting specifics on this particular case. I have got to say that I am disappointed with some of the trade unions involved here. I am a very strong supporter of trade unionism, so I regret to have to say this. There are 20,000 direct workers in this industry. If they were to put in $25 a week, that would be $1,300 a year. So that is $26 million a year. That can support a loan of $260 million. Are you going to tell me that you are not going to get one of these workshops for $260 million? What is it? It is a heap of scrap iron and some real estate that has to be cleared—though, it would cost you a bloody lot of money to clear that scrap iron off it, I can tell you. So $260 million will buy you one of these plants.

So who are you going to sell the motor vehicles to? Twenty-five per cent of motor vehicles in Australia are purchased by government. I was very surprised to find that the Catholic schools in Queensland, for example—and I presume the Anglican schools and the Lutheran schools—purchase their cars under a government contract. So 25 per cent of all motor vehicles are purchased by government. Need I say more! If you get 25 per cent of 600,000 motor vehicles that are sold every year, you are laughing all the way to the bank—and someone has got 150,000 motor vehicles that he can sell to this Australian manufacturer.

Like every other government on earth, all this government have to do is say that, if it is a government vehicle, it will be an Australian made vehicle. But they say, 'Well, that's inconvenient.' Well, yes it is. I thought Toyota vehicles were made in Australia. I thought I was buying a Kluger and that it was therefore made in Australia. I found out, to my horror, that it was not. I do not think the Ford Escort is as good a machine. Well, too bad for me—it is an Australian machine and I should be made to drive an Australian motor vehicle. So I should be made to drive the Ford Escort. All of us should be driving Australian motor vehicles and, by protocol, all of us in this parliament should be driving Australian motorcars.

So there are the answers. They are not very difficult. For these workers, it is $25 a week versus the dole. That is what they are facing. There are no jobs in Melbourne or Adelaide. There are definitely no jobs there. So where is the government going to find the money to look after these 50,000 people that are going to be thrown out of work? Where is the money going to come from? As the great exchequer who resigned from Margie Thatcher's government said: 'I just could not convince her that if you closed all of the coal mines then you had to find welfare for 100,000 employees and their families and the cost of that was infinitely greater than the cost of running those mines at a loss. Whether she could not add up or whether she was just pig-headed, I do not know. But that is the reason that I resigned from the government.' That is also the reason that the people of Great Britain slaughtered her in the subsequent election. She preserved herself by shooting a few Argentinians there for a while and showed very courageous leadership. I have to give her full marks for showing courageous leadership, but shooting a few Argentinians should not get you re-elected.

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