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

In addressing the Export Control Bill 2019, the previous speaker—the member for Groom—made a very big point of saying that the government have done a lot for jobs in rural Australia and that they were needed to promote rural Australia. Well, they've been the government for 26 out of the last 31 or 32 years, and there has never been a bigger population surge away from rural Australia. I'm not proud, either, as the member for Kennedy, to be presiding over the greatest loss of population from rural Australia in the nation's history. The population is going, going, gone.

But let me come back to the basic premise of this bill. Let's get back to the free marketeers. I've said previously that it's like living in a lunatic asylum here—I hope I'm not one of the contributors! But if you continue to do what you're doing the same way that you're doing it and it's wrong then, to quote the great Wayne Bennett, that is the definition of insanity. Well, this place has launched a policy of free markets, and every speaker from the mainstream parties has got up and said, 'Isn't it wonderful?' I'll tell you how wonderful it is: you've destroyed every secondary industry in the country! You've closed down the whole motor vehicle industry. You've closed down the entire petrol industry. You've closed down almost all of the textile, footwear and clothing industry. You've closed down all of the whitegoods industry. Where the hell is the benefit? Two speakers, one from Rockhampton and one from Toowoomba, said: 'In agriculture.' And I thought I was the resident clown here! You're not trying to steal my thunder, are you? I mean—agriculture!

I'll give you the figures for agriculture because you're too dumb and lazy to find them out for yourselves. We had 172 million sheep before you free marketeers—

See this speech in context