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

I fail to understand how anyone could be so stupid as to put forward the proposal that is coming forward here. In fairness to the Treasurer, he inherited this stupidity. If you were going to act on some issue that is going to be extremely detrimental to a large number of your members of parliament, then surely you would check it out beforehand. As I say, the Treasurer inherited this. I think he has just had to go forward with it, whatever he might say. But let me be very specific. I probably represent more backpackers that any other member of parliament, so I would be the one that would know most about it. If you take the backpackers out of my area, people would go out of bananas, for example, and move into sugarcane because they cannot get enough labour to do the job. We have thousands of jobs for locals, but there are not enough workers to do the job that needs to be done. That is why we need the backpackers.

There are two targets for tourism in Australia—some really great targets. There is Far North Queensland—the Cairns region—and the Gold Coast. People from overseas go to other places, but these are actual tourist destinations. Twenty-five per cent of that tourism industry comes from backpackers. If you take that 25 per cent out, there is a huge hole torn in our tourism package. Also, they are all the young people. They are down there on the Esplanade in Cairns. There is a big, giant swimming pool there. They are all having a terrific time. There are buskers and people playing guitars and having a really good time.

Debate interrupted.

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