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

I must address the remarks from the member from Townsville, the member for Herbert. If I have ever seen a solo expedition of self-annihilation it would be her contribution to this motion. Here is a town on bended knees, with the highest unemployment rates of any city in Australia; with crime rates where there are 80 cars being stolen every week—it was reported that it was every week but I think it is every month—in a city of 170,000 people; and with suicide rates that are appalling. And she was saying, 'We will have no coalmining.' That is what she was saying.

I will say one thing for the CFMEU. They have always been a little bit communistic. They hate the Labor Party, because they know the Labor Party has never really been on their side. The CFMEU want decent wages and conditions, which will make them really well-off people. That is what they aspire to: a job and a decent income. The member for Shortland is in a coalmining area that gave the Labor Party all of these seats. I think you had better start having a look at your coalmining seats, because you are losing all of them—all of them are being lost.

This country has only one source of income now, the two quarries—the coalmining quarry and the iron ore quarry. The last time I looked there was $130 billion out of $320 billion coming from two sources: an iron ore quarry and a coal quarry—and you want to close the coal quarry down and bankrupt your country. That is what you want to do. Let's have a look at the figures. I speak with authority, because I happen to have been the mines and energy minister when Queensland had the cheapest electricity in the world. We had the cheapest in the world.

See this speech in context