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

I rise to speak to the original bill, the Government Procurement (Judicial Review) Bill 2017, but, obviously, that has gone sideways. I have risen again and again on this issue. I have a unique position in this place, because I have been a member of parliament for longer than anyone else in Australian history, with the exception of Billy Hughes—not good company to be in, Mr Deputy Speaker, I can tell you. I have seen the complete destruction of manufacturing in my country, and, if you go back to my speeches from 35 years ago, I was probably advocating a movement towards free trade, but you have to judge policy upon its outcomes.

I wrote a book, and some would argue it was based, to a very large extent, around the views of Edward Theodore, who Malcolm Fraser said was one of his two heroes and who Paul Keating said was one of his two heroes. I have a picture of Jack McEwen and Ted Theodore on my wall. I am not an important person. I'm not the Prime Minister of Australia; I am a relative nobody, but I say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you couldn't find three more unalike people on the planet as those three people. But they agree on one thing. The whole existence of the Labor Party was to get arbitration, which has been removed by free markets, undermined for the worker and completely removed for the farmers. So we have been left to the tender mercies of Woolworths and Coles and the foreign marketplace, where every farmer on earth gets 40 per cent of his income from the government—and we get none of our income from the government. So that is real fun. But, you have to be judged on your outcomes. You have completely closed down the motor vehicle industry. You have completely closed down the whitegoods industry. Every single thing that you use in your house, from an air conditioner to a washing machine to a fridge, is now produced overseas.

I remember vividly when Keating said: 'We are going to be the most free market economy on earth.' That was one promise that he did keep! It was six o'clock in the morning. I picked up a boot and threw it at the wall. I thought, 'From now on, I have to look after the workers in this country. What does this imbecile think? Do we go down to slave labour wage levels, give massive subsidies like our competitors, or close down industry in Australia?' They were the alternatives. Clearly, we were never going to go to subsidies. So we had two alternatives, not three, and one was to close down the industries here. So we closed down the industries. Were you surprised? That morning I knew that, if he were fair dinkum, every industry in this country was going to be closed down. Your motor vehicle industry has gone. Your whitegoods industry has gone. Your glass industry has gone. Your textile, footwear and clothing industry has gone. Your steel industry is about 60 per cent gone, and soon it will be gone completely. Your cement industry has gone—well, 40 per cent gone, but soon it will be gone completely. I was referred to by Keating as the 'last socialist' left in this place. I don't know. What the hell.

When QCL, Queensland Cement and Lime, was in a bit of trouble—we could see that it would be mopped up by a foreign corporation, and the entire cement market in Queensland would not be buying cement produced in Queensland but would be buying cement being produced overseas—we went in and bought the company. If you said to Bjelke-Petersen that you were going the pay $1,000 million to a foreign corporation to build a rail line into the Galilee he would have had you put in a lunatic asylum. But now we're the people being put in a lunatic asylum.

Where is the benefit? I have waited for a single speaker from that side, or from this side, to point out a single benefit. They all got up and said 'rural industries'. If there is one person in this place that represents rural industries it is me. There is no doubt about that one. I don't think anyone would contest that one. I represent the biggest agricultural industry in Australia. I represent about a sixth of the Australian beef industry. No-one represents more beef cattle than I do, and we are down 23 per cent. After this drought we are going to be down even further in our numbers. The beef industry has to help the sugar industry—one of the four giants of the Australian agricultural economy. We're now 17 per cent. In fact, we're closing a sugar mill every three or four years in Australia. Soon we will have no sugar industry at all. It didn't help the sugar industry. Did it help the dairy industry, which is one of the big four? Their production is down 31 per cent, so it most certainly didn't help the dairy industry.

The next one is the wool industry. This industry had carried the Australian economy for 160 years. In the year that Keating chose to deregulate it, it was bigger than coal. It was the biggest export commodity this country had. It was the biggest and greatest asset this nation had, and Keating destroyed it. These people participated in the destruction. Seventy-two per cent of our sheep industry has gone. There are your big four in agriculture. It didn't help them. Who did it help? Please, stand up and tell me who it helped.

When I walk into this place I walk past a magnificent portrait of the first member for Kennedy, Charles McDonald. If you ever watch me walk past I never walk past without saying, 'Good on you, Charlie.'

When we got arbitration, what the government did was allow blackbirding, indentured labour in the sugar industry, and they allowed coolies, indentured labour in the mining industry. They said, 'Take that one, Mr Trade Union Movement, Mr Theodore and all your mignons. Take that one between the eyeballs.'

A bloke on a bicycle in a place called Chillagoe north of Cairns had a dream that we weren't going to live like slaves any longer. He lived not far away from Mount Mulligan, where 72 human beings were blown to pieces in the Kennedy electorate. Seventy-two human beings were blown to pieces in one explosion. In my hometown, Charters Towers, 23 people were blown to pieces in a matter of seconds. This is what was going on. We fought the fight. He had this dream this he could actually make it better. Do you know what he did? Within seven years he had taken over control of Queensland and said: 'Righto. You blokes did that, so what we are going to do is take all your plantations off you and hand them over to the cane cutters, the people who actually work it and actually live here in North Queensland. We are going to take all your pastoral runs off you, you big foreign corporations, and we are going to hand it over to Queenslanders.'

There is a political message here. Do you know that the people that lived outside of Brisbane loved that bloke so much so that for 56 straight years the labour movement won every single seat outside of Brisbane in almost every single election. When you do the right thing, people see that you are doing the right thing. With Bjelke-Petersen, every single election we increased our majority. That was because we strained every muscle and nerve and sinew to see that the people of Queensland owned the assets. We owned the electricity industry. We owned the railways. We owned the ports. And—it would be unthinkable—we owned the cement and lime company that was producing cement in Queensland. I don't know how many things we owned, but the people of Queensland owned them, and we produced from them and, yes, we enabled foreign corporations to come in and use those facilities, but we charged like a wounded bull. They said that sometimes our rail charges were a bit high. Well, I didn't notice.

The famous Sir Leo Hielscher is the greatest Treasurer and financier the country has ever seen by a long way. Two of the three biggest bridges in Australia are named the Sir Leo Hielscher Bridges, and quite rightly so. I think at his address last weekend he had five ex-treasurers, one or two ex-premiers and about seven or eight ex-cabinet ministers. He's one of the most famous men in Australian history and he is the architect of the economic miracle which was Queensland. It was wonderful to hear that man speak. He took a state where we had chooks in the backyard—he had chooks in the backyard; my family had chooks in the backyard. We were poor people; everyone in Queensland was poor. But we suddenly became rich because we owned the assets; we put government money into developing those assets. We didn't build pleasure domes on the South Bank of the Brisbane River. We built railway lines where the men with the hard hats and the hard hands could go and earn a big quid. If they got off their backside in the city and were prepared to go out there and work hard, they made big money. And I'm proud to say that the workers in the state of Queensland were the most highly paid workers in the world when the government fell in 1990. And they could only bring us down by backdoor, backstabbing methods.

I have written a best-selling history book. It was published by Murdoch Books, and it was launched by Kevin Rudd no less, with over 1,000 people in Sydney. We turned away 200. In Melbourne we had 750 people when it was launched by Barrie Cassidy. That was not my choice; that was Murdoch Books' choice. I'm proud to be associated with both those men. When they write a history book of this period, they will spit upon all you people sitting over on that side and all you people sitting over on the other side. When you read my history book and you read about those people who reduced us by 72 human beings who were blown to death at Mount Mulligan and 23 who were blown to death at Mount Leyshon—and my own son worked at Mount Leyshon—you spit upon those people. When people listened to Sir Niemeyer from the Bank of England instead of listening to our own people and we had the worst depression of any country on Earth, they spit upon those people. If you read that book and that history of Australia, you'll say there were great men and there were little pissants.

God help the people in this place when the history books are written, because this period has presided over the most disastrous destruction of the Australian economy. This country now has only two things left that we can export from two quarries, an iron ore quarry and a coal quarry. Let me be very specific: more than 50 per cent of our income comes from two quarries. That's all we've got left. And quarries run out. I'm a mining man; I've been in mining all my life. Eventually your mine runs out. What have you got when the mine runs out? You've got nothing. Let me just say that they're at about $120 billion to $130 billion a year. The next item down is maybe gold or aluminium or beef, which is at $11 billion. You've got nothing left. All you've got is two quarries. That's all you've got left. And who did it? And what are you doing today? Are you apologising? Are you reversing it? No, you're doing just the opposite. I said it again and again about the car industry.

I hope that somewhere in my country will rise up in righteous anger and destroy the people who are in this place. My brothers in North Queensland, where the last explosion came from, have a look at the figures; have a look at the One Nation and KAP figures. We're ready for the explosion up there, I can tell you. And we'll lead the same as we did last time. But, when that explosion occurs, one of the first things to do is to restore the motor vehicle industry, which is as far away from me as the South Pole. But I love my country. One of the greatest stories in the history of Australia is the story of Laurence Hartnett and Ben Chifley, who created the car industry. It is so easy to do that, because all you've got to do is say, 'All motor vehicles purchased under a government contract will be Australian made.' That's all you've got to do. But the right to do that—that little piece of sovereignty—is being removed, to their eternal shame, by the ALP and the Liberal Party. So that right is being removed by those people. And I promise you, you will be recorded in the history books.

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