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

The proposal was to impose a 32.5 per cent tax. The current situation is that we will impose a 29½ per cent tax. I think my worthy colleague and neighbour in this place, the member for Dawson, speaks genuinely and sincerely on behalf of his electorate at all times. We thank him and his colleagues for a reduction of three per cent. We do not have any illusions that we are applying a tax of 30 per cent. It was a little bit over 30 per cent before, so there really has not been much change at all.

When it comes to this place, there are two great problems with the National Party. My first problem is its performance in this place; my second problem, which is infinitely worse, is that I have seen how the party representing non-city Australia should perform—and the latter problem is probably more important than the first.

The most wonderful example of that that I can provide was when, after a decade or so of Labor in the federal parliament here, the Menzies government was elected. Within weeks Mr Menzies announced a revaluation upward of the Australian pound. Within two days the titular leader of the National Party, Jack McEwen, announced that there would be a devaluation. Two weeks later Mr Menzies announced a devaluation, not a revaluation. The reasons for that was that the National Party—the then Country Party, as it was called—walked out of the coalition and brought down the Menzies government. It could be argued that they briefly brought down the Lyons government. But on three occasions they voted with the opposition in this place, asserting their muscle power and having the courage of their convictions to represent the people that they were paid to.

The first act by the Country Party after the war was to fight the 'Battle of the pound', as it was called on the front of the Sydney Morning Herald. The last act of the Country Party before it disappeared was under Doug Anthony. Prime Minister Billy McMahon announced a revaluation upward of the dollar, and two days later Doug Anthony announced that it would be coming down, not up, and 'if that dollar was not going to come down, then the government would come down.' So, of course, within nine days the dollar came down.

So, the first act of the Country Party, when they had power, was to assert themselves over the issue of the value of the dollar, and the last act before the Country Party went out of existence was on the issue of the dollar. Now, I am not aware of a single statement by a single National Party member in this House on the value of the dollar at all. I remember vividly when Doug Anthony called that coup. I was selling a big mob of cattle that year and I got 25 per cent more for my cattle that year—so I love that man.

Let me turn specifically to the issue before the House. We are going around clapping our hands and saying, 'How wonderful!' It was 32.5 per cent; now it is only 30 per cent. Mr Deputy Speaker, do you realise how completely stupid and hypocritical one sounds? My chief of staff read that out from the speech of one of the National Party senators, and I burst out laughing. Do you really think it is an achievement? You are going to hit us with 32 per cent—we were on 19½ per cent—but now you are going to hit us with 30 per cent. Oh, what a great victory!

She said it to me as a joke, with a sense of humour. I must admit that I burst out laughing when she said that to me.

What is not funny is to be pulled up by people late at night at the Hughenden hotel. The owners of the two hotels in Hughenden work extremely hard. In these little towns they are desperate for labour all the time. They are desperate to get people to work in their hotels. One of the owners really razzed me on this issue. She said, 'We just simply can't get people to come out here and work.' Whatever the reasons may be, that is the reality. My wife's relative has a cattle station and almost all of the workers on that cattle station are backpackers. It is a big station, and it is right out in the middle of nowhere. Backpackers have a lot of the fun there, and they bring a lot of enrichment to the local community. I do not know how she could run her cattle station without these people. I often stay at the Barron Valley Hotel in Atherton. I think some 90 backpackers also stay there. Again, there are something like 60 or 70 employees in that hotel. If the backpackers go, we lose 60 or 70 jobs in a tiny little town like Atherton.

I have great respect for the member for Dawson, but, all the same, I question the fact that people will employ a backpacker before they will employ a local. I think every time you want a local person, who is there all the time, you would as a general rule employ a local over a backpacker. I have to say to the House that, when I was drinking at a hotel in Tully, I said to these blokes, 'What do you do?' They said, 'We're banana workers.' I said, 'Well, it's Tuesday and you're not working.' They both said, 'No, we don't work on Tuesdays.' I said, 'Righto.' They said, 'Yes, some Thursdays we don't work, and on Mondays, too, we don't work.' You get that sort of approach. While people condemn the backpackers, our local backpackers, we have bananas in our supermarkets because of these blokes. Even if they are not the hardest working blokes and they have a bit of fun, I cannot really condemn them.

But there is a very serious issue here, and that is that, if you have a wife and three kids, you would be better off on welfare than working. So, while the member for Dawson quite rightly pointed out that a lot of people do not work, there is a disincentive for them to do so because of the way the welfare system works. If you have a wife and three kids and you are on 50 grand a year, you will pay virtually the same tax as a person who has no wife and no kids. The disparity in the tax rates in Australia is appalling. In the days of the old Labor governments, there was a belief in fairness. If you have a family of five and you are on 50 grand a year, you should not be paying much tax. If you are on 50 grand a year and you have no family then you should be paying more tax than the person who has to look after four other people.

I think there are two great problems in Australia today: the complete lack of respect for motherhood and the spiritual values in the country—and they are reflected in the Tax Act and come out in neon lights in this particular issue. Many times hardworking people in the banana industry people, whom I represent, come up to me and say, 'Mate, we'd make more money off welfare if we didn't work.' I often ask them: 'Why do you work then? They say: 'You've got a responsibility to work. You can't just be a bludger.' This is a very good sentiment.

There is another issue here. I am one of the two representatives of the Far North Queensland tourism industry. There is the Gold Coast and Far North Queensland, the greater Cairns region, if you like, and to a lesser extent the Mackay-Airlie Beach area. They are the two great tourist destinations. When I say 'tourist destinations', there are people who come from overseas who like to visit capital cities. Everyone on earth does that, right? But why do they decide to come here? It is because we have magnificent beaches on the Gold Coast and we also have the Great Barrier Reef and the jungles of North Queensland. This is why they come here. The great tourist mecca of Australia, outside the Gold Coast, is Far North Queensland. When I used to go to a hotel in Far North Queensland, I would regularly see people like Lee Marvin and Bo Derek at that hotel. Tourism attracts the most important, prominent people in the world.

You will not have a tourism industry if you take away the backpackers. One quarter of the Far North Queensland tourism industry is in fact the backpackers—and you have taken away their incentive to come here. Their wages, their incomes, have been cut by a third, and you are saying that will have no effect. Of course it will have an effect. My own children are fond of going overseas to work for a year or something of that nature, and they like to work out how much money they will make. The fact is that they are not going to be making much money at all if they are paying a third of it to the government. That is not the case in other countries. In fact, in this countries they were paying virtually no tax at all, although I think it is a government's responsibility to take some tax off them.

We, the people of non-metropolitan Australia, watched the wool industry being completely destroyed. Australia's biggest export earning industry was destroyed by deregulation—by stupid policies in this place. We then proceeded to watch the sugar industry being destroyed by deregulation and a decision not to go to ethanol. We cannot compete against Brazil, the big boys, in the sugar exporting market because they have ethanol; we do not. They cross-subsidise it.

I represent the tobacco industry. Tobacco is naughty, yes. Well, we all know that. A town in Victoria had 3½ thousand people employed in the tobacco industry. The people of Mareeba had 2,000 jobs. That was completely destroyed by deregulation—nothing to do with people not smoking. There is the prawn and fish farming industry. I regret to say that it was the National Party that deregulated the sugar industry in this place. It was the National Party that deregulated the tobacco industry. They held the portfolio. It was not the National Party in the prawn and fish farming industry; it was the Liberal Party that introduced restrictive environmental laws that completely destroyed that industry. It went from $750 million a year at one stage to about $27 million a year. It was the National Party in this place that destroyed the dairy industry through deregulation. And it is not good enough for the National Party to come into this place and skite that they had $140,000 for every farmer. That was one year's income you got for them, and the poor beggars were put to the sword. Seven thousand of them vanished without trace. In my own area, there were 240 and there were 36 the last time I looked. It was one of the most intense areas in Australia. I was speaking to a person in Victoria the other day who had over 320 and now has three. It has completely destroyed an entire industry. What for? To make Woolworths and Coles rich! We are getting less money and consumers are paying the same. Actually, consumers are paying a bit more. Forget about one single line. Coles have made a welter out of—over our dead bodies, I might add—the dairy industry. Without ethanol, sugar cannot compete. There is a 23 per cent benefit in sugar cane if it goes to an ethanol stream—cross-subsidised across to the sugar stream. In grains it is exactly the same—a 13 per cent benefit. (Time expired)

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