Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

Being a little bit more senior than most people in this room, I can remember the days when Australia was a coal-importing nation. Very few people know that in 1959 Australia was a coal-importing nation not a coal-exporting nation. Now how did we go from being a coal-importing nation to being a coal-exporting nation? In Queensland, we, the Country Party government, were not a government that said, 'Oh, if private enterprise wants it, then private enterprise will build it.' We were not a government that said, 'When you've got the mines, we'll build the railway line'—the chicken and the egg. The mines said, 'We're not going to open the mines until you've got a railway line.' We didn't worry about the chicken and the egg; we didn't worry about this concept that said if private enterprise wants it private enterprise will build it. No, we went out and built the railway lines. In a 29-year period, we built 6,000 kilometres of railway line. Under the ALP government in the following 28 years there was no railway line built—none, zero.

We have to ask ourselves: who is the socialist government here and who is the free enterprise government? Using traditional definitions, one would have to say that the Country Party is the socialist government and, of course, the Labor Party is some other sort of government—and there is no doubt that in Queensland they are a Greens government. There is not the slightest scintilla of evidence that would indicate that they are a Labor government. Over their 50 years in office, the Labor governments of Queensland, under the great 'Red Ted' Theodore and his governments, built the sugar mills and the dairy factories. Actually, the Queensland government built some of the mines as well.

Let us move on and ask: if you want the Galilee opened up, why do you want the Galilee opened up?

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