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

I want to be very specific when I talk about the grand generalities of 'we are going to get foreign investment' and 'we are going to set the place alight' and 'we are going to attract investment from overseas'. Well be specific, back up your rhetoric with some specific examples. I constantly interjected on the minister asking him to give me some examples of all this wonderful foreign investment and what it has done for Australia because I am dammed if I can see it.

There was a study done in 2006. It said that only 11 per cent of the surface area of Australia was owned by foreign investment, only 11 per cent. The last speaker, the minister, seemed to think it was a good thing that Vestey owned all of our country. Lord Vestey did own two per cent of Australia. Apart from supplying cattle to some of my people in Cloncurry—he did not do that voluntarily, by the way—I cannot think of any reason in the world why anyone would thank or praise Lord Vestey. In fact the government of Queensland built three public abattoirs to break the stranglehold of Lord Vestey on the beef industry of Australia, which figures prominently in Phillip Knightley's book, The Vestey Affair. I would strongly recommend that the minister, instead of coming in here and making statements which only indicate his towering ignorance, reads Phillip Knightley's book and how Vestey paid the Argentinian beef growers nothing and paid the Australian beef growers nothing until we broke his hold by building public abattoirs in the state of Queensland.

Eleven per cent does not sound like a great amount of land. But then I discovered that 53 per cent of the surface area of Australia is on the world register of deserts. I would not have thought Australia was 53 per cent desert but anyway that is the figure. It is from National GeographicI can give you the reference. Twenty-three per cent of Australia is supposedly owned by the First Australians. Identifying myself on occasions as a First Australian and speaking on our behalf, we do not own anything because we cannot get a title deed. Twenty-three per cent of Australia is sterilised because we cannot get a title deed so we cannot borrow money, so we cannot buy cattle, so nothing can be done with it so it just sits there lying idle. I might add that almost all of the 23 per cent is the top third of Australia, which, if it were a separate country, would be one of the wettest countries on earth. There is no lack of water in the electorate I represent, I can assure you. A further seven per cent is national parks. So seven per cent is national parks, 23 per cent is sterilised because of the unwillingness of government to give title deeds out, so that is 30 per cent, and 53 per cent is desert so that is 83 per cent.

But of the 17 per cent that is left, 11 per cent is owned by foreigners. Let me just repeat that very slowly: 53 per cent is desert, 23 per cent is owned in a way that you cannot get title deeds—so you cannot use it—and seven per cent is sterilised, not by lack of title deeds but as national parks. Thirty per cent and 53 per cent is 83 per cent, which leaves you with 17 per cent. And of that 17 per cent, 11 per cent is foreign owned. That was in 2006. I am pleased to see the member for the Murray River areas sitting over there because she is well aware of how much of her country and homeland has been bought by foreigners.

At Mount Isa Radio, I was told that Bobby Holder wanted to see me. I said, 'What does Bobby Holder want to see me for?' They said, 'Does it matter?' The implication was that Bobby Holder is a legend in his lifetime. He is 83 years of age and he is still competitive and winning roping contests. Instead of being the header, which is the easy part of roping; he is the heeler, which is the difficult part. You come out at a hundred mile an hour on a horse doing a flat gallop, and you swing a rope and try to pick up the back foot of the animal. Most of the time, Bobby Holder does it. This man is a legend.

Bobby Holder is also famous for something entirely different. He has sold more agricultural property than anyone else in Australian history. He knows more about the selling of agricultural land in this country than anyone else in this country. He said to me: 'What's going on in rural Australia? What's happening?' I said: 'They're all going broke, Bobby. That's not any news to anybody.' He said, 'So when they go broke, what happens?' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'Who do they sell it to?' I said: 'You know Australians cannot make any money out of agriculture, so it is all getting sold to foreigners. They haven't woken up yet that we can't make money out of agriculture in Australia.' He said, 'What's your mob down there in parliament going to do about it?' I said: 'Nothing, they're not Australians; they're globalists. They don't believe in the Australian interest. They believe that big corporations should be allowed to trade freely and that that will save Australia. I can't see any logic in that, but maybe there is some logic and, as a dumb country boy, I can't figure it out.' I said: 'Bobby, what do you reckon should happen? Let's just say there was someone down there who cared about their country. What should I tell them?' He said: 'Get the government to buy them. Buy the land and lease it back to them.'

Grant Fawcett, a man whose intellectual capacity I have great respect for, of DJ Partners and CEO of Southern Gulf Catchments, has a proposal that we set up a corporation funded with government guarantees out of superannuation moneys to buy the farm and lease it back to these poor people who have been there for five and six generations. Some of them are not even settlers—and there have been some terrible instances of them doing away with themselves; I do not use the s-word anymore—they predate the settlers. They descended from an explorer family. They were explorers not settlers.

If we want to solve the problem of foreign ownership then the first thing we have to do is make agriculture in this country profitable. To do that, we have to get in step with the rest of the world. We keep getting preached to in this place about free markets and level-playing fields. I do not where the hell the level-playing field is! The Australian dollar has been propped up by interest rates a thousand per cent higher than the rest of the world.

As I said to Glenn Stevens, and I appreciated Glenn's time: 'I was the minister responsible for the State Bank in Queensland and if we were 50 per cent out of step with the banks in some division, I would want the CEO in to explain to me why we were 50 per cent out. If we were a hundred out, I would sack him. He wouldn't be given a chance to explain any damn thing; he'd be thrown straight out a window! If it was a thousand per cent, I would personally jump out the window.'

Our interest rates are a thousand per cent higher than the rest of the world. The rest of the world has been on an average of around 0.23 per cent, whereas for the last couple of years Australia has been on an average of 2.6 per cent—a thousand per cent difference, a thousand per cent out of step with our trading partners. Bring interest rates down to where they should and the dollar will go to where it should be, which was 49c when it was allowed to free-fall under Keating—and then for reasons best known to him, he propped it up. Mr Costello came in and did the right thing, initially, and allowed it to free-fall and it went to 51c. Surely, it should be clear to everybody that in a buoyant economy, the Australia dollar was only worth 49c and 51c. Well, we sure ain't got a buoyant economy today.

Our two export-earning items, iron ore and coal, as everyone is well aware, are both on the ropes. Our manufacturing industries are vanishing; 72 per cent vanishes with the car industry. So we have mining in deep trouble, we have no manufacturing, we have to buy all our petrol from overseas and we are buying nearly 40 per cent of our food from overseas. It will be rather interesting to see how we can continue to do this—all our whitegoods from overseas, all our petrol from overseas, all our motor cars from overseas. Nearly half of our cement and the iron and steel are used in houses—corrugated iron roofing et cetera—come from overseas.

The Australia dollar is the No. 1 problem that we have to fix up. It is very simple: just bring the interest rates in line with the rest of the world. Do what they are doing. We can assume that we are the only clever people on the planet and that Europe, the United States, Japan and Brazil are all dumb; that we are 'Mr Cleverness' of the planet.

There is the little matter of subsidies and tariffs. Heaven only knows how many times we get preached to in this place about subsidies and tariffs. It was a pity that the likes of the minister did not go and preach it to the other countries, because the last OECD report that was done—it think it was 2007 or 2008—talked about the average support levels, which are basically subsidies and tariffs, and that 40.1 per cent of a farmer's income throughout the world comes from the government via subsidies, tariffs, grants et cetera. In Australia, it is 5.6 per cent. If we are betting that our farmers are 34 per cent better than our competitor nations then we will win. If they are not, then agriculture in this country must fail.

Finally, unlike any other country on earth, the Americans are squealing blue murder because Costco and Walmart have 23 per cent of the food market. Woolworths and Coles have around 90 per cent of the food market. There are only two companies you can sell food to in Australia and only two companies you can buy it from.

If you fix up those three problems, you will not have to worry about foreign ownership of your country. For those who are not worried about more than half of Australia's arable land being in foreign hands, think about this: are you really an Australian?

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