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

For his information, the party that he belongs to is the child of the Country Party. The Country Party was formed by Jack McEwen, who formed the Milk Marketing Board in Victoria. When he says it can't be done, the founder of his political party did it. It is a very famous story, which bears telling. He was only 28 years of age. He was actually a city boy, but he loved the country and he just went bush. He called a meeting of all of the dairy farmers in Victoria. He said he was sick of sitting on a dirt floor, eating rabbits in a galvanised iron shed, and that from now all the milk would be sold through a milk marketing board, called a cooperative.

There were a few big farmers—and obviously this bloke here would be representative of them—and they disagreed with him. Jack McEwen said he had to explain it to them privately. He kept the meeting going. He took them out the back of the meeting, and he belted the living daylights out of all three of them. He then came back in and said, 'Does anyone else want it explained to them? I'm quite happy to explain it properly to all of you if need be.' From that moment forward, he was called Black Jack McEwen. We got our dairy marketing plan. We stopped living on dirt floors, thanks to the likes of this fellow. We stopped living in a galvanised iron shed and eating rats because somebody said, 'We can get a decent price for our product, if we pull together and sell it as a unit.' That was called statutory marketing.

The foundation of the Country Party was statutory marketing. It was formed to deliver statutory marketing in wheat in Western Australia. At the meeting, after the single-desk seller for wheat concluded, no-one left the room and they then pulled themselves into a meeting to form a political party to deliver statutory marketing in the wheat industry. This fellow here knows nothing. This fellow here says you can't have it. We had it for 100 years, but he says you can't have it. We had it for 100 years.

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