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

I was in a party called the National Party for 23 years. I had the same recognition rate in Queensland as the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, and I was the standard-bearer for that party. When I came into this place, I got lectures from a bloke who was very tall and wore a hat. I'm not going to talk about the dead, but he said, 'We will have free markets and we will be the food bowl of Asia, because we have a clean, green image.' I quote: 'clean, green image'. He then opened the door, under his free market ideology, to every single product known to man.

We said: 'Please don't let the prawns in. If you allow prawns we will get white spot.' White spot is now in our country, costing us hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Tobacco was allowed in. Grapes were allowed in, and you know the California grapes contain the glassy-winged sharpshooter—only the Americans could think of a name like that, but it's a terrible disease. The pork was let in. The peanuts were let in. Everything was let in. How can you possibly promote yourself with a clean, green image when you allow everything in? Of course every disease will come in.

In the electorate of Kennedy, we have been very much on the receiving end of these diseases. We've got Panama disease, which has closed very large sections of the banana industry in Australia. I represent almost every banana in Australia. We all know how citrus canker hit the citrus industry. Again, we pleaded with them not to bring the stuff in. The then leader of my party—not the gentleman with the hat; another gentleman, the leader of the party—gave special permission for citrus product and shoots to come in from South-East Asia, from a country that was known to have citrus canker, and, of course, there was a very generous donation given to what was then my party. Black sigatoka, papaya fruit fly—I could go on and on and on, but let me address the issue of the trade with Indonesia.

Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia—I'm not denigrating her, because I don't think she understood what she was doing, and Four Corners has a lot to answer for here—banned the live export of meat into Indonesia. They have been excellent neighbours to us. Every country has neighbours, but they have been truly excellent neighbours. Compare them to Canada and Mexico with the United States. They have been excellent neighbours to us. Quite rightly, two weeks later, the former Prime Minister realised her mistake and reversed the decision, but you don't start telling the fifth-biggest country on Earth, 'We're going to turn the trade off, and now you can turn it back on again.' That doesn't happen.

They quite rightly banned the export of livestock into Indonesia, and that went on for nearly two years. It was one of the reasons why I took a stand and had some persuasive influence on Kevin Rudd being returned. I want to say, in great praise of Kevin Rudd—who, it seems to me, is maligned by both sides of the House—that within nine days of being restored to the prime ministership, he was in Indonesia. Within 13 days the market was reopened, and within two months the price of cattle had doubled. To the day I die, I'll be very proud of having played a small role in putting that person in where we could get that problem solved.

On this issue, I rang Sam Daniels, one of the bigger cattle owners in Australia; Mark Harvey-Sutton, a pivotal leader in the industry, who comes from my hometown; Garth Power, another very prominent cattleman in mid-west North Queensland; Russell Lethbridge, highly representative on many bodies; and Sheep McCarthy, the current president of Australian farmers for North Queensland, and arguably northern Australia. I spoke to these people, and I'll single out Sam Daniels, who said, 'We need to send 32.6 million over to Indonesia straight away.' It is not a huge problem for them. It's something that needs to be done— (Time expired)

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