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

I rise to speak many times in this place, but I must send the last speaker an application form for our party because he is obviously in the wrong party, given all the things he has just said. He will get into terrible trouble when the bosses hear about what he said today. For his information, the closure of the fishing industry occurred under the Liberal Party not the Labor Party. On the budget cutbacks—I am a great admirer of frugality and I like to think that my years in the state cabinet in Queensland were marked by very strong, frugal eyes. There was no profligacy in spending. It was very cost-effective where we put the money. So I applaud the government for striving to cutback government expenditure, but it can become quite ridiculous when we go chasing $7 million over three years. We are wasting the time of the parliament on $7 million over three years on a budget of $450,000 million. Just how petty has this become?

I think it needs to be said and resaid and resaid. I am holding here a wonderful article from Professor Denniss on Bob Menzies and budgets. According to the current government, Swan's deficit of 3.3 per cent of GDP in his final year in office was a 'disaster', a 'budget crisis'. That is how the current government described Mr Swan's deficit. It turns out that Mr Menzies in his last year had a budget deficit much higher than that recorded by the ALP. So by the current government's yardstick, Mr Menzies was a shocker, worse than the Labor Party.

When we talk about budgets, the world record for deficits was held by the government that I was part of, the old Country Party Bjelke-Petersen government. I would say we must have had the biggest budget deficit in human history because on an income of about $3,000 million, we borrowed $3½ thousand million over two years just to build a railway line, a port and a power station. The point of this very brilliant article by Professor Denniss is if you spend $5,000 million—and this is not what he says but what I say—like the Queensland government is doing, building another tunnel in Brisbane, then what you do is burden the people of Brisbane with, according to their Treasury, one-seventh for maintenance and upkeep. So of $5,000 million, you would burden the people of Brisbane with a $700 million weight upon their back—not my figures, Queensland Treasury figures. It says when you build an asset, you must allow one-seventh for amortisation, maintenance et cetera. I think that is not a bad figure, actually.

What happens when we do this—to quote my son, the state member for Mount Isa—what do we get for $5,000 million? A few thousand people get home a few minutes earlier to watch the television. That is what we get for the $5,000 million. If on the other hand that money was spent, as we spent it in the old Country/National Party government, on a railway line into the Galilee Basin and the coalfields then, I estimate, within five years you would generate $1,000 million a year in, if not profit, most certainly operating surplus. That is what we did in Queensland. We ran these massive deficits, but the money was not spent on self-indulgence. The money was not spent on a more agreeable lifestyle and cutting the time to get to and from work. The money was spent on creating real wealth continuously.

Let me go back to the tunnel example because it is very relevant to this Rural Research and Development Legislation Amendment Bill 2014. This bill says we should get the people to put the money into research; the government is not going to put the money into this area any more. Rather than the state government in Queensland committing $5,000 million of resources to build another tunnel, it could spend $3½ thousand million building a railway line into the Galilee Basin, where half of this nation's coal assets lie, and create 20,000 jobs for the next 100 years at least. You tell me what is the best use of that money, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is not a matter of budget deficits or budget surpluses; it is a matter of what you spend the money on. The Queensland government is spending $5,000 million on another tunnel. It would appear to me that per capita Brisbane already has twice as many tunnels as anywhere other city in the world. If that money was spent on a railway line, we would create 20,000 jobs in a state where jobs are vanishing at the speed of the sun going down in the afternoon—universal collapse of the economy Queensland.

Let me turn to bill specifically. Geraldine Maguire is president of the Malanda Chamber of Commerce, a once great milk producing area which was slaughtered by government deregulation by the LNP and ALP. Geraldine is being very positive. They are putting forward an Australian agricultural precinct concept where there will be a great emphasis on innovation—they will create an innovation hub. She is drawing upon the strengths we have in this area because in the lower tablelands per capita we have more PhDs than anywhere else in Australia. Unfortunate and sadly the reason for that is governments have progressively, in the time that I have been in parliament, cut back on all scientific research. I think there were 20-odd people working in the CSIRO arboreal research centre in Atherton. I doubt whether there would be six working there now. Keera research station was the biggest research station in northern Australia and employed about 32 people under Mick Nasser. There is no Keera research station now. When I became member for Kennedy we had about 126 scientists working full time, mostly in the area of agriculture and agricultural processing. I doubt whether we would have 30 now. I think the figure is about 26. All of that accumulated handed-down knowledge is gone.

I will give you one example of what this means. There are over six million hectares of heavy infestation of the mid-western Gulf Country by prickly acacia tree. Written across the map—it is 25 years old now—it says, 'The best natural grasslands in Australia.' Sadly, they are not grasslands at all; they have this terrible weed, pest, whatever you want to call it, the acacia nilotica tree. All of the accumulated research over 20 years is in the pest and weed research station in Charters Towers, which has virtually been cut in half by the current Queensland government. All of that accumulated knowledge and wisdom has simply vanished. So instead of moving forward we are moving backwards.

One of the saddest things in Australia is that CSIRO say you have to be more related to the marketplace—the free market philosophy and ideology. I do not know that we would have any science much on earth if past governments throughout the world for the last 2,000 years went on that policy. Galileo was on the payroll of the Medici family. Unless money is coming in from powerful people and government and they have banking resources available to them, then science simply cannot move forward.

Let me go back to the CSIRO example. Our little party believes that we need an extra $2,000 million a year put into science and some of that needs to be earmarked for CSIRO. It is one of the great institutions on earth. CSIRO came up with the mix amitosis virus which wiped out the rabbit plague in Australia. I could quote 100 other examples of brilliant internationally renowned work done by CSIRO but the sad thing now is that the Murray-Darling commission wanted these people to come up with a report that would say, 'Oh, terrible, terrible, what's going on in the Murray-Darling. We've got to do something about it.' So CSIRO came up with figures that were 300 per cent different than the Murray-Darling Basin. I do not know; the Murray-Darling Basin may have been wrong and CSIRO right, but there was a 300 per cent difference.

In ethanol they were paid effectively by the greenhouse gas emissions office of the federal government to do a number on ethanol and they remain responsible for the only report on earth that I know of which says that carbon dioxide increases if you use ethanol instead of petrol. Every country on earth now has ethanol except for African countries and Australia. China, India, half of Indonesia, Thailand, all have moved to biofuels, ethanol. All the north Americas, Canada, Mexico, the United States, all of the South American countries with the exception of Venezuela of course—an oil producing country—and all of Europe have signed up to 15 per cent. Everyone one of them has done it on the basis of a report saying that it dramatically reduces CO2 and other volatile and dangerous emissions. Basically, ethanol is introduced to stop people from dying from motor vehicles but all harmful emissions are reduced dramatically by ethanol, which is pure alcohol and gives a magnificent burn, which overcomes most of the problems with gas emissions. But to see CSIRO, this great and renowned institution, prostituted to the extent where it will produce an article which says the exact opposite of the truth is unfortunate. Their argument was that they were given parameters by the greenhouse gas emissions office and they had to work within those parameters. Well actually they had to come up with a report saying that they had increases CO2 emissions. The point I am trying to make here is that we do need research. Sometimes it is wasted. Academics get a little bit carried away and go into peculiar areas but they have to be given some latitude and they must be given independence.

On the same issue, one of the major bodies involved is the Sugar Research and Development Corporation. It has been rejigged in such a way that the millers have effective control now instead of the farmers. You say, 'What does that mean?' It means that they are going to breed new varieties. We have to breed ever-newer varieties of sugar cane and a variety that will suit the mill will be one that goes for a longer period yielding sugar content, whereas the cane farmer would like a greater sugar content in a shorter period when he would like to see the milling take place, but it is very much to their detriment that this is taking place. (Time expired)

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