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

Those of us who read history books will be well aware that World War I was touched off by Winston Churchill purchasing, or getting his government to purchase, the shares in British Petroleum. So Britain owned Shell and it owned British Petroleum, with America. Shell plus British Petroleum was almost all of the world's oil reserves. When Churchill did this—enabling his navy, of which he was the minister, to outgun, outrun and out-protect any German vessel—the German government, the German people, said: 'The Anglos control oil throughout the world, and they will keep us as a third-rate power forever. So either we fight or we accept that we are going to be a third-rate power.' So Germany decided to fight. In the Second World War—the part that concerns us, with Japan—America embargoed the petrol going to Japan. So two world wars, resulting in the deaths of nearly 100 million people, if you throw in the Spanish flu, were precipitated by oil.

We've fought a war almost every single year—since I left school, anyway. When I left school we were at war with Indonesia. I was wearing the uniform, and I was on my way as a platoon commander to fight in Indonesia—my platoon was on 24-hour call-up. What was it about? It was about oil. Sukarno had moved in and seized the oil holdings of British Petroleum. I think it was British Petroleum, but it was British interests that owned the oil in Borneo, and he'd moved in and taken them. Churchill had a wonderful phrase when Hitler invaded Russia. He chortled, 'Those that cannot learn the lessons of history shall be condemned to suffer again the lessons of history.' And that is exactly what occurred, of course: the Swedish king—Charles II, maybe; my memory fails me—Napoleon and, of course, Hitler all sank in exactly the same way.

If we can't learn the lessons of history, and China embargoes oil into this country, a very simple thing I asked about the week before last—and the Middle Eastern people have embargoed oil on, I think, seven occasions. They've cut off the world's oil supply. Well, there were a lot of other sources in those days. Now there are not. We didn't have to worry too much, because we had our own oil. We were self-sufficient in oil. History will judge the free marketeers in its place, and future generations of Australians will spit upon the people in this parliament, just as people like myself spit upon the memory of Billy Hughes, because history tells you what really happened.

I don't know how many different figures we've got, because no-one will come clean. But let me say that, on balance, it would appear that we are 25 per cent self-sufficient in oil, and we export it all because our refineries can't or won't refine it. It's light crude—'light' means it's light in aromatics. Aromatics give a lot more power, and they are carcinogenic. Everyone wants aromatics out, so they buy the light crude from Australia. Australians don't care how many people die, in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, from breathing in superfine particles. Every other country has gone to ethanol, of course, to overcome the superfine particle problems. It's five per cent throughout Europe, 12½ per cent—last time I looked—in America and 30 per cent in Brazil. Everyone has moved to ethanol for health reasons, but we don't seem to worry about that. The NRMA—God bless them—did their report and said we had effectively two weeks of petrol supplies in Australia, but I'm jumping ahead of myself. So we export all of our oil and we import all of our petrol, diesel and avgas. That's smart, isn't it: importing fuel that's carcinogenic and heavy in aromatics! Also, you don't get such a good burn, so you get the superfine particles going into your lungs and killing you. In actual fact, if you move from, let's say, Armidale or Tamworth to Sydney, your chances of dying of heart or lung disease almost double. They're the findings from California, and that's why America introduced ethanol and other renewables through its air quality control legislation, to replace the aromatics in petrol and to get a much better burn.

Let's put that aside for a moment. I've been in parliament nearly 50 years. I'm the second-longest-serving member of parliament in Australian history. For the first time ever I saw a leader stand up and lead a standing ovation for Andrew Robb for doing the free trade deal with China. I was sitting next to my colleague Andrew Wilkie, and I said: 'This bloke will not be there in six months. The people of Australia will never accept the rubbish that he's putting out here, that the free trade deal with China is good for Australia. Free trade deal with China? Are you joking? China will do exactly what China wants to do, and you, like little puppy dogs, will do exactly as they tell you to do.' And that's exactly how it worked out. But I was wrong on the six months. I said, 'He won't be there in six months; there will be forces that will hear and listen to this, and they will get rid of him.' I was wrong. It wasn't six months; it was three months—three months after the standing ovation for Andrew Robb. There's Andrew Robb, the man who sold the Port of Darwin for 30 pieces of silver—$990,000 a year—and the Liberals are giving him a standing ovation. What a great man! Only $990,000 a year from the company for the Port of Darwin—no punishment, no retribution, no apologies to the Australian people for having sold the port.

Reading the history books, you can see many intelligent people who are very determined, and I think in China we're dealing with very intelligent people who are very determined in their ambitions in the South China Sea and with Pacific nations. They are a flashing neon light. If you can't see that light coming down the tunnel at you and work out that it's a locomotive, then you are really dumb, to use Churchill's terrible aphorism. And I might add a couple of others, like von Clausewitz: 'A people without land look for a land without people.' If you take out what I call the 'golden nulla nulla'—starting at Cairns, 100 kilometres wide, coming down the east coast of Australia, through Melbourne to Adelaide—and take out a dot around Perth, you'll find that 93 per cent of the service area of Australia is occupied by under a million people. As a race of people, how much longer do you think that's going to go on for? Two hundred and fifty years ago, we thought it was alright to have 300,000 people here. We didn't need an army. We didn't need any right to protect ourselves. We didn't need to go and learn how to use a bow and arrow and all those sorts of things. No, we didn't need any of those things. She'll be right, mate. We Australians are very lucky to be alive today.

Have we learned by our mistakes? Let's go back to the free trade deal with China. China got upset over a comment by our Prime Minister, so they just cut off everything going to China. Did we cut off everything coming from China into Australia? No, absolutely nothing. So the free trade deal is not worth two bob, like every other free trade deal. Do you think America are going to listen to tiny little Australia if they want to preserve their aluminium industry or their sugar industry or their dairy industry? Of course not. But the brainless imbeciles in this place, the free marketeers, have sold off everything that can possibly be sold. We own nothing, the Australian people. They sold the Commonwealth Bank. They sold the airports. They sold the seaports. Anything that has not been hammered down, they've sold. The only reason they didn't sell the Snowy was that there were two people sitting on the crossbenches, Andren and me, and we recommitted the motion. And God bless Alan Jones and John Laws, who hammered and hammered and hammered, and the Australian people rose up in rage because they'd had enough of it: 'You're not selling the Snowy!' So the Snowy wasn't sold. The only things we own now are Australia Post—which I reckon is under a very heavy cloud, with the sacking of that wonderful lady Christine Holgate—and the NBN, put in by the much-maligned Kevin Rudd.

Let me go back. Twenty-five per cent of our oil can be used in Australia if those refineries are made and we ban the export of oil. Southern Oil is already working at a profit. The Premier of Queensland and the Prime Minister of Australia have both been into its factories. It is getting $27 million from both of them to build a giant plant at Ipswich in Queensland. It already has plants operating at Wagga Wagga and Gladstone, and they're running at a profit. They take waste from the garbage bin in your backyard and, through a process called pyrolysis, turn it into diesel. The Germans, in the latter days of the war, got almost all of their diesel from pyrolysis. We have the wherewithal, through waste recycling, to be able to meet 30 per cent of our needs.

I don't want to denigrate people but I mean, honestly, building an emergency supply of petrol in America? It's on the other side of the globe from Australia. It's in the Western Hemisphere, and we're in the Eastern Hemisphere. It's in the Northern Hemisphere, and we're in the Southern Hemisphere. If you want the rest of Australia to laugh at you, just do things like that.

Going back to this bill specifically, petrol prices are being held down by 4c a litre—and that is coming out of the ACCC, not from me—because United Petroleum is in the ball game. You've just given a golden handshake to their competitors, and they now have the wherewithal to wipe United Petroleum out, so you can kiss goodbye to that 4c a litre for the Australian people. You are the people who want a level playing field.

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