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

I am counting how much time you have taken off me, Deputy Speaker. If I could disagree with what you have just said. This is a parliament for debate between those people and those people and these people and that person and that person, and I disagree with what he was saying then I am entitled to say that. If that is a reflection upon him, that is your interpretation. If you are saying to me that I am not allowed to say something which reflects upon him then I would disagree with you strongly. If my remarks are pejorative or personal then I withdraw those remarks and I accept what you are saying. But if you are saying to me that this is not a place for debate between one person and another then I disagree with you very, very strongly indeed.

To back up what I just said about the previous speaker, he said that he thanked the government for the free trade regime which they have introduced. Well, we are talking about the dairy industry. We will have a look at what free trade has done for the dairy industry. Don't these people do any homework at all? Before this wonderful free trade regime of his was introduced, we have 2.2 million dairy cows in Australia—2.2 million milkers in Australia. We now have 1.7 million milkers. That is the loss of three-quarters of a million dairy cows. Free trade has helped us!

Acting Deputy Speaker Broadbent, surely he knows that we were on around 59c a litre for fresh milk before deregulation and after deregulation we were on 42c. Thirty per cent of our income was taken off us, and he talks about these hardworking people. Well, hardworking they are and you took 30 per cent of their gross income off them. These poor people do not understand a lot of these things that are happening to them. All they know is the banks are ringing them up. Well, there were 13,000 of them before this wonderful free trade regime was imposed upon them. There were 13,000 of them; now there are 6,000 of them. This has been good for them, has it, the loss of 30 per cent of their income, which basically went to Woolworths and Coles! This has been good for them!

What is wrong with the parliament of Australia? What is wrong with the government of Australia? What is wrong with democracy in this country that a person who may be a good member of parliament can get up and put out a statement that is so colossally out of keeping with reality? Does he know nothing about his own electorate?

I had to watch the horror in my own electorate, and I did not watch it as a National Party member because that was the final straw for me. The LNP wrecked the sugar industry, wrecked the maize industry, wrecked and completely closed down the tobacco industry of Australia and wrecked the fishing industry. The ALP completely shut down the timber industry of North Queensland. You wrecked all these industries and the final straw for me was the dairy industry. There were 15 members in the party room that day. I know should not say what was said in the party room, but this is flattery for them, I suppose. Every single one of them got up and said that this will be worse disaster in Australian history. Julian McGauran said that it will be the worst train smash in agriculture in the nation's history if the deregulation goes ahead. He said that in the public arena. He also said that in the party room and everyone said, 'Here, here, we agree' and they all got up and spoke and said that it will be the greatest disaster. What did they do? They straightaway went ahead with it. What is the point of being in a party room that is a joke? We unanimously say, 'We're going to go this way' and then unanimously go the other way—then you join reality land in here.

The result in the area I represent is that we had about 240 farmers and the last time I looked we have 38 farmers. That is all that is left. That is arguably the worst area in Australia for an outbreak of a certain disease—the s-word I do not want to use anymore in this place or elsewhere. Heartbreak and misery were imposed. People keep talking about farmers. For every dairy farmer there were nine other people who worked in the industry as contractors, suppliers of feed, haulers who carted the milk in and out, workers—not that there are a lot of employees in the dairy industry—and the factory workers from the very big factory in the Kennedy electorate behind Cairns. That carnage was reflected all over Australia. There were 13,000 dairy farmers; now there are 6,000.

We stand here today to talk about some little irrelevancy in the greater scheme of things. But there is one party in this country that are the true standard-bearers with pride from the old pre-war Labor Party and the standard-bearers with pride from the Country Party. We have already had the sugar industry reregulated in Queensland. For the first time in 29 years, the farmers have been able to get a fair go. They have a monopoly situation in the situation, exactly the same as in the dairy industry. If my farmers cannot sell to the local factory, they have to put the milk in a milk wagon and take it all the way down to south Queensland—nearly 3,000 kilometres.

Similarly, in South-East Queensland now—unless they go across the border in New South Wales to Norco and carry it many hundreds of kilometres—the local dairy factory has a monopoly, because of the destruction of the dairy industry by the people in this parliament. It was a magnificent and viable industry. Atherton was the only branch of the three major banks that had no farmers in trouble, until this parliament destroyed their livelihoods—and then we probably had more farmers in trouble than anywhere else in Australia. We had 240 farmers and now we have 38 farmers. That is happening right across the board in rural Australia.

When farmers go broke they have to sell their shares in the local factory. So now the factory is owned by a corporation that can pay them whatever they feel like paying them. If that is not bad enough, the ultimate buyer of the fresh milk is Woolworths and Coles. One of the worst countries on earth for concentration of market power is the United States, and Costco and Walmart have 23.1 per cent of the market, the last time I looked. Woolworths and Coles have around 90 per cent of the market in Australia.

If you doubt me, go and have an argument with ACNielsen, who did the series, or go and have an argument with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, who did the series. In 2002 one series said that Woolworths and Coles had 72 per cent and the other series said the two had 68 per cent. There was another big player in the field at that point in time who is not there now—it was not Davids; it was another very big player—and most of that is now owned by Woolworths and Coles. In any event, they had two per cent market growth each year. So, from 2002, at two per cent market growth, that is another 20 per cent of the market—and they had 70 per cent then. Both series said 70 per cent and both series said two per cent. The net result of this is that Coles make a big hero of themselves selling milk at $1, but they are selling it, quite literally, over the dead bodies of the farmers. They are making big heroes of themselves with the public at the cost of the farmer—the greatest cost that anyone could suffer.

The Australian economy has lost some half a million dairy herd. That is $1,000 million a year. The Australian economy has lost $1,000 million a year. And the cost and the heartbreak of 6,000 farmers and some 60,000 workers losing their jobs, well, you can figure that our for yourself. If you lose your job, pretty typically you lose your car and you lose your home. In about 40 per cent of cases, you lose your family as well due to the heartbreak, tension and trauma that set in, and in about two per cent of cases you lose your life. Those are the ugly statistics that are out there.

There is no-one to blame for the situation in the dairy industry, except the people in this place. The previous speaker lauded the TPP agreement and the free trade with China agreement—as I am quite certain every other speaker in this place will do. It was so good that the government had to put advertisements on three and four times a night on every television channel telling us how wonderful it is. Those advertisements went down so well that the polls for the Prime Minister fell to such a degree that the Liberals threw him out—and their polls are plummeting once again. Well, that is what happens if you get up in this place and laud a decision to deregulate this industry—a decision which destroyed the industry. If you are so stupid as to laud those sorts of policies, you will get thrown out. The other mob over here, who are no better, were almost totally to blame for what happened due to the deregulation of the sugar industry. Members in here get up and preach free trade. Where is the free trade when you have got two people in this country to sell food to? Where is the free trade within Australia, when you have two people to buy food from and two people to sell food to? It is worse still in the sugar and dairy industries because we can only sell to the local factory and sugar to the local sugar mill. So they have a monopoly.

So it has been left to the KAP, our tiny little party and, I have to say, the LNP under the leadership of Lawrence Springborg in Queensland. We thank them very much for their support in this area. We have a bit of joy there at the moment on some of these issues with Mr Springborg in there. So it has been left up to a tiny-weeny, miniscule little party like the KAP. What are the government doing at the present moment? They are spending all their time trying to eliminate the tiny, miniscule parties—and the people will have no voice at all, because the only voice in this place that opposed the deregulation of the dairy industry was the voice of the party that I represent, the KAP. That was the only voice we had in this place. And the forces on that side of the chamber and those on the other side want to extinguish that voice, so that they can free trade everything.

Let's have a look at where we are going. By far and away, the biggest cattle-owning company and the biggest landowner in Australia is Macquarie Bank, under Terra Firma, which was Great Southern—which they purchased. I need confirmation of this, because I am only going on media reports that say that they own 320,000 head of cattle. That would be a significant proportion of the land surface of Australia. When the last survey was done 11 per cent of Australia was owned by foreign corporations. That does not sound too bad but, when you take out 52 per cent of desert and 20 per cent which is supposedly owned by the first Australians—but they own a glorified national park—and then you have the national park with another seven per cent, with 11 per cent they owned more than 50 per cent of the available land back in 2006. Uruguay, the biggest wool producer outside of Australia, is one of the 20 poorest countries on earth. Why? Because 72 per cent of Uruguay was owned by the United States. They got no benefit for their great product, their wool. It was in its heyday then and was a bigger export in Australia than coal. That is where Australia is going. (Time expired)

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