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

A gentleman called Carl Katter was managing the family store in Normanton in 1904. He'd been managing other stores for the family prior to that. He had three boys. Norman Katter was one of those boys, and he died as a result of the tyranny of distance. Bob Katter Sr was one of those boys, and he died as a result of the tyranny of distance. Bob Katter Sr was my father. He was found on all fours, delirious. We'd got bogged. Then the sun came out and he walked to try and get assistance, because we couldn't get the car out of the bog, and he suffered very severe heat stroke and was effectively hospitalised for three days. It was only the luck of having the Batt brothers that saved us, and I thank them that I'm on the planet today; otherwise, we'd have all perished in the car as well.

I got my first job outside my family at Mount Isa Mines. A gentleman's car broke down outside Mount Isa on a very lonely road, and he attempted to walk to Mount Isa and perished. That's the tyranny of distance. And it's the famous title of a book by Geoffrey Blainey. The story of Australia could well be our determination to conquer the tyranny of distance. Mareeba is the biggest town on the Atherton Tablelands. Some 60,000 people are connected to Cairns by a highway, and it's about an hour's drive from Mareeba to Cairns. On most of that drive there is no coverage. We're talking here about a highway that would carry maybe a hundred thousand cars a week. If you have an accident there, let's say in the middle of that highway, then, by the time the vehicle gets to a range and communicates to the ambulance and then gets the ambulance to come from Mareeba or Cairns, you're looking at an hour's downtime. If it's an hour's downtime, you almost double the number of people that die. Victoria has a much lower road death toll than Queensland for no other reason than you're always much closer to a major base hospital in Victoria than you are in Queensland.

Cyclones are very frequent on the Far North Queensland coastline. During Cyclone Larry a person riding a motorbike came over a crest, there was a big tree across the road and he hit it. He had a very serious head injury. He had a mobile telephone, but there was no coverage in that area. By the time someone discovered him and got the ambulance out it was too late. He had died. Two very good friends of mine were in a plane that went down near the cattle station I've owned for most of my adult life. There was a mess-up in communications. If there hadn't been that mess-up, I think one of those people would have been alive today. It was, again, the tyranny of distance.

Having said that, we thank the government, because I think there has been a very real, continuous and strenuous effort made to provide service to black spots. We appreciate that we've got more than our fair share, I suppose. Forrest Beach, Fishery Falls and numerous other black spots in the Kennedy electorate—Boulia, Dajarra, Julia Creek and, to some degree, Cloncurry—have got upgraded services directly or indirectly from the government.

That brings me to this bill. The Australian people own nothing. This parliament, this House, the people who sit here, have sold off every single asset of this country. The much-maligned Kevin Rudd—the only things we own are the NBN and the Australian postal service. There is not the slightest doubt in anyone's mind that Christine Holgate was sacked because she wouldn't allow privatisation. The ports in Australia have been sold. The biggest coal port in the world, Newcastle, has been sold to China. The only Panamax port in the northern half of Australia, Darwin, has been sold to China. Five of the six major mining companies in Australia have been sold to foreign interests. Five out of six were Australian owned 30 years ago; now five out of six are foreign owned. God bless Twiggy Forrest, the last of the stand-outs and hold-ons.

We're breaking up Telstra. Everyone knows why we're breaking it up. It's because the government are going to have a lot of trouble selling it off and getting permission. The people rose up, almost in revolution, against the sale of the Snowy Mountains—God bless John Laws, Alan Jones and all those people who fought against the sale. This is a break-up with a view to selling it off piece by piece. If they attempt to sell the whole lot they're not going to get away with it, because the people of Australia have had enough.

Even if you don't care about anything but your own miserable political hide, even if you don't care about the people of Australia, even if you haven't got a scintilla of patriotic sentiment in the whole of your body, even if all that's true, look at Queensland, where a Labor government effectively sold the railways and the electricity industry. They were annihilated in the subsequent election. My memory tells me they were down to five seats, but correct me if I'm wrong. They went from being the government of Queensland to having five seats. The incredible stupidity, or obsession with ideology—believe me, people have voted for communists; they had an obsession with communism. Believe me, people have voted for fascism; they had an obsession with fascism. In this place we've had an obsession with free markets. What a disaster they have been! I'll quote one quick example. Our third biggest export, and one of only three significant exports this country has, is gas. It was sold for six cents a unit and we're buying it back for $16 a unit from the foreign corporations that own it. Qatar produces the same amount of gas that we do. They get $39 billion a year from their gas and we get $3 billion a year from our gas.

And here it is happening yet again, and you think that we crossbenchers are stupid enough to go along with what is clearly a sell-off of one of the remaining assets. To my knowledge, and I could be wrong, the only things left in the cupboard now are Telstra, Australia Post, the Snowy Mountains Scheme and the NBN. And it's thanks to the much maligned Kevin Rudd that we've got the NBN. They're the only four assets the Australian people own—and you're going to try to sell one of them off.

When the Liberal Party got in they reduced the ALP to five seats. When they then proposed to sell the rest of the assets they were similarly annihilated. They were reduced to six or seven seats—I can't remember what it was now. It was a most extraordinary phenomenon. A lady who in normal circumstances could never become a premier of a state ended up a premier of a state. But you people don't learn. The people of Australia cry out in their pain as they watch every single asset that their forebears put together as pioneers living nowhere and dying, as I've just described some of my own family dying, as a result of the tyranny of distance and other tyrannies—tyrannies of wage structure—which have slowly been deregulated and undermined and white anted. They see it all go—and you think they don't notice?

It's been intriguing for me because for people it's the little things. Forced immunisation—the reports are that there were 14,000 or 15,000 people out in Cairns. And they knew what they were doing. I'd say one in 50 of them was walking around with a Eureka flag; and I'd say one in 50 of those flags had on it what was written at Eureka. When oppression becomes law then resistance becomes duty. Yet you thieve the assets of the people and sell them when you've got no right to sell them. They don't belong to you, the government; they belong to the people of Australia. One brave little soul, who's not in this place anymore, whose daddy worked for Telstra, got up in here and moved that you can't sell the asset unless it is the will of the Australian people by way of a vote. Needless to say, she's not with us anymore. No surprise. You get paid for standing up for your principles in this place!

We tenaciously oppose the break-up of Telstra. And we know what it's about: at the present moment, there is cross-subsidisation occurring. When the decision to sell Telstra was brought into the party room John Howard was the prime minister. I think he's one of the most genuine and good Australians we've ever seen in the prime ministership. Unfortunately, and sadly, the history books will be very cruel to his government, and deservedly so, but he himself was an outstandingly good person. When he dies he will go to heaven, I'm sure. I was still in the party room then—which demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the party room. I stood up and said: 'Prime Minister, you've got to be joking. Everything's being done by cross-subsidisation. I've had four changes of telecommunications delivery system on my cattle station, but it'd be the same for most small communities in the Gulf Country and Cape York and these places. You've got to be joking.' He said, 'No Bob, we will have universal service obligations.' I said: 'Oh come on, Mr Prime Minister! Mary Murgatroyd in Julia Creek is going to take on a legal battle to enforce the UFOs. She's going to take on Telstra, arguably the biggest company in Australia? There's no way the universal service obligation will be worth two bob.' And, of course, they're not. I could give you 100 cases.

We tenaciously oppose this bill and we know what's going on. We know what sneakiness is going on, with exactly the same argument as the sacking of the head of Australia Post. We know why she was sacked: because she wouldn't sell Australia Post. God bless Christine Holgate; she's a hero. I'll tell you, if you people vote for this you won't be heroes. You'll be going down in the history books all right—and it won't be nice.

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