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

It's sometimes good to come into the House, which I'm not noted for, and listen to speeches, because I didn't know we were using a lot of copper. As a copper miner and an owner of copper mines, I'm disappointed to hear that, but my knowledge of optical fibre would lead me very strongly to endorse the remarks of the previous contributor to this debate. We really do need optical fibre. We're getting plenty out of the electric cars and that sort of thing, so we don't need to be in the communications system. This leads me to saying that I owned a moderately remote, very large cattle area, some 250,000 acres of country, and we had the flying doctor radio network—God bless John Flynn and Alfred Traeger for that. You would have to say, 'Over' every time you finished a sentence and then you would say, 'Over and out' when you finished your phone call. Of course, everyone could listen in. Then we had the party line, as it was called, which was copper wire, and everyone on the party line could pick up their telephone and listen in to your conversation, which was very, very unfortunate at times. Then we moved onto what I think were called DRCs, digital remote concentrators, and then another form. We had four changes in technology in the space of 20 years, and these were complete changes in technology.

One moves forward with fear and trepidation, but I want to emphasise to the House: you have presided over the sale of every single asset owned by the Australian people. You sold them off without any consultation with the Australian people. Michael McCormack's seat was held by Kay Hull and she had the courage to walk across the floor—

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