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

You are quite right in noting that in northern Australia $40,000 million comes out of the coal industry every year; $75,000 million out of the iron ore industry, $11,000 million out of the aluminium industry, $15,000 million out of the gold industry and $10,000 million out of the beef industry. In fact, the vast preponderance of Australia's export earnings comes out of North Queensland. Then there is the Galilee rail line. For three years Clive Palmer was going to build it, but now he is not going to build it. GVK, Gina Rinehart's Indian company, was going to build it, but now it is not going to build it. Mr Adani was going to build it and we do not know whether he is going to build it now or not. For heaven's sake, every inch of railway line built in Queensland was built by the government into the coalfields. They have to be multiuser facilities. To quote the great Andrew Forrest in Western Australia, the decision by Charles Court not to build that railway line as a government railway line—in sharp contrast to what we did in Queensland—cost that state 25 years. They were behind in their development. If the Gaililee line were built tomorrow, you would get $7,000 million and 20,000 jobs for the next 100 years—just for $2,000 million for a railway line. It would not be $5,000 million; it would be just $2,000 million, which you would get back every year from the state government by way of mineral royalties and payroll tax.

I table today one of the most damning documents in Australia. It has a picture of Cape York Peninsula and a picture of Victoria. They are both the same size in area. Cape York has three times more rainfall, yet it has 141,000 head of cattle and Victoria has 4.2 million head of cattle. Why aren't the cattle there? For two reasons: in 25 years the governments of Australia have refused to give title deeds. It is no use saying a tribe owns it, because that is not ownership—that is a statement of aspiration. It is not an ownership title deed. We need to give these 4,000 First Australians up there who cannot get a job, because there are no cattle up there and there is nothing else much happening up there, title deeds and irrigation, which is the other factor that we need desperately. We also need government guarantees on loans for the development of these various projects.

I constantly hear reference to the Georgetown proposal and the Mareeba proposal. I was up in Georgetown the other day, and all I know is that I got my backside kicked a hell of a lot over that particular project. There are probably some who are in favour of Nullinga—and I do not criticise the member for Leichhardt, because he was officially approached by people about this—but nobody in Mareeba wants Nullinga. So could the government please get in step with North Queensland and what they are going to do? This government has given $3 million and the previous government gave $3 million to the upper Burdekin scheme, and I do not know how many hundreds of millions have been spent on the upper Herbert scheme. So there are two schemes I can name straight off.

The member for Leichhardt, or one of the previous members, was dead right in talking about prawn and fish farming. We said—and I was the minister that sort of was involved in getting the industry started in Australia—that we would catch up with Thailand by the year 2000. Thailand was on $2,000 million. We are languishing on $600 million. Not only have we not caught up with them but we have actually gone backwards from where we were whilst Thailand has gone on to $10,000 million a year in the prawn and fish farming industry. We should be doing $20,000 million in the prawn and fish farming industry in Australia.

If you give us a lazy little government guarantee for $90 million—and maybe in this case we would like a grant—to build a canal, we could give you a $6,000 million a year phosphate industry, and that is not including the iron ore, copper and zinc that would be opened up with that canal. We cannot get the product out—it has got to go all the way back to Mount Isa and Townsville. With silicon there is $5,000 million. That is $50,000 million, and then there is ethanol. There would be 500,000 jobs. All we ask for is a guarantee of a little bit of money. You cannot tell us you are giving us $5,000 million and give— (Time expired)

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