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

It is $39 at every good book store. Let me return to the subject of this—telecommunications. Ahmed Fahour was put in charge of Australia Post and paid himself $11 million in his last year. Before I exposed that salary to the House and the fact that he sacked 2,000 employees, I might point out that the Labor government hadn't opened their mouths about the sacking of 2,000 employees, possibly because there were about 50,000 of them sacked under Labor governments in Telstra and probably 100,000 sacked in the railways throughout Australia. We never sacked a single railway employee when we were in office. That is the essence of what we're talking about here.

The remarks by the previous speaker—that we're not going far enough with this—are acceptable remarks. If you say the cost is astronomical, well, it was exactly the same when Chifley put in the telephones: it was $25 million, and the budget of Australia was less than $25 million at the time. Don't quote me on those figures, but I think you will find they are roughly right.

I'm switching tack completely now. As to what we're talking about today, if you say the current services are adequate, I say they are grossly inadequate. In Normanton and Mornington Island and all of the Gulf country—and there are 5,000 or 6,000 people living in the Gulf country—their services vanish completely every time we get a cyclone. Since we get a serious cyclone once every two years, there is a very serious risk to the enjoyment of life, for the sake of a better word. Everything comes to a halt when the telecommunications system goes down, and it goes down in every cyclone. In fact, in some storms it goes out. Our ability to fix it up is very, very limited indeed.

I asked John Nelson, one of the leading cattlemen in Australia, about the first thing he would do if he were the boss of Australia, and I was quite amazed when he said 'telecommunications'. The band speed just drives you off your head. The mayor's wife at Burketown—I don't like using her name without her permission—is constantly advocating the need for faster speeds and greater bandwidth for people living in remote settlements in Australia. There are mining settlements, there are tourism settlements, and there are cattle stations; there are 101 people in this sort of situation in Australia. If we do nothing good in Australia, one thing we have done well is The Ghanthe taking of the railway system right out into the middle of nowhere—and the taking of the telegraph system right out into the middle of nowhere. We've prided ourselves on that, but we're now falling right behind the eight ball.

You can't cash your cheque in places like Dajarra, because there's no EFTPOS there. The services are so limited, and the modern day and age require these services. People work a hell of a lot in plastic magic rather than cheques, and it becomes a very serious problem if your telecommunications system goes out. I ran out of cash during Cyclone Larry and I was hungry. It was the second day and I hadn't eaten very much. People won't take a cheque these days, and of course I couldn't use my plastic magic. So I simply had to go hungry. One of my Sikh friend's family were good enough to take me in that night and feed me. Otherwise, I would have just had to go hungry. There were an awful lot of people in Innisfail and the greater Innisfail area that went hungry when the telecommunications system went down, and there were very serious threats to life and limb. A tree falls across the road, and a bloke driving a motorbike at a very low speed comes over the crest and hits it. He's got serious brain damage. There are no telephones to communicate to anyone that he's in this situation. He waits for a car to come along, and, of course, by the time he gets to hospital, he's nearly dead. That actually occurred.

In summary, I wasn't aware of the use of copper. I'm not a cattleman; I'm a copper miner. That's my trade. That's who I am. Before I went into parliament, I was mining copper out of my own mines that I found and prospected myself with my partner. The necessity for optical fibre is absolutely essential. We should be making optical fibre here in Australia. We have the best silicon deposits in the world at Cape Flattery and numerous areas north of Cape Flattery—the very far north-east coast of Queensland.

We can produce silicon at one-tenth the price that our competitors can produce it at. I was with the great Sir Leo Hielscher. Two of the four biggest bridges in Australia are quite rightly called the Sir Leo Hielscher Bridges. Bjelke-Petersen gets all the credit for the building of Queensland, but I think half that credit should always have gone to Leo Hielscher. Speaking to him the other day in the presence of my parliamentary chief of staff, he said, 'They are exporting bauxite from the new mine in Cape York.' He burst out laughing. My chief of staff was looking at me. He said, 'What's the significance of that?' I said, 'Because when the Japanese came in and said that they were going to export bauxite, and they thought we'd think that was wonderful, Leo Hielscher laughed and kept laughing.' He said, 'You will not export bauxite from Queensland; you will export aluminium from Queensland!' Would to heaven this place was run by Sir Leo Hielscher! 'You're not taking the bauxite; you will take aluminium.' They said, 'What about the cost of electricity?' He said, 'We'll complete Gladstone next year, and we will have the cheapest electricity in the world, because we have a reserved resource policy that coal is free.' Gladstone was fired on free coal. It was the biggest power station in the world, so its economies of scale were beautiful.

We had a working station at a place called Collinsville. It had 200 employees, and it was putting out 200 megawatts of electricity. Gladstone put out 1,400 megawatts of electricity and only had 200 employees! So the wage structure was nil; the coal cost was nil, because under the reserved resource policy the coal was free; and, of course, it was a massive economy of scale, a massive power station. When it was built, it was the biggest power station in the world. So we could provide the Japanese with the cheapest electricity in the world, which meant they would have the cheapest aluminium in the world. But the current government in Queensland, of course, like every other government in Australia, including the government in this place, has allowed the product to go out of this country completely unprocessed. And it'll be to the shame of this place.

I've written a history book. It was published by Murdoch Books. They're the big boys on the block when it comes to publishing. You've got to be pretty good to get a book published with Murdoch press. But I won't go into all the ins and outs of it. You write the history of the nation. You put in Ben Chifley, because he gave this country 26,000 houses, built after the war to mop up unemployment. He gave this place a telephone in every house. He gave this place the Holden motor car. He gave this place the Snowy Mountains Hydro.

An opposition member: Hear, hear!

Don't say 'Hear, hear!', mate. Your mob in this place gave us absolutely nothing, with the exception of Kevin Rudd, who was stabbed in the back by a lot of people on the Labor side of this parliament. That's the best example. I was quoting Chifley, but I don't want you saying 'Hear, hear!' as if you have the same policies as him. You have the complete opposite policies to him. Your government sold off almost every asset that the people of Australia owned! (Time expired)

An opposition member interjecting—

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