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

Speaking to this, it's not so much what this does; it's the things that don't get done because this is being done. There is a fundamental difference, a world of difference, between a make-money project and an absorb-money project. I'm not denying that a ring road around Melbourne would be a good thing to happen, or a super highway and a second airport in Sydney wouldn't be good to happen. I'm not denying that what the previous speaker said wouldn't be a good thing to happen. But is this a make-money project or an absorb-money project? I would say it's a classic absorb-money project. I do not know of a single industry that will be helped or promoted by the construction of this railway line, not a single one.

I can give you a thousand examples of make-money projects. Queensland was a Cinderella state with a very, very tiny economy, an economy much smaller than South Australia's, and the making of that economy was the use of government money on make-money projects. If anyone has listened to the wonderful address by Sir Leo Hielscher—two of the four biggest bridges in Australia are quite rightly named the Sir Leo Hielscher Bridges after one of the great architects of the economic miracle which is Queensland—they will know that Queensland had no coal industry; it had a negligible copper industry; it had no aluminium industry; it was the fourth-smallest state in cattle population; it was a Cinderella state. The government built the railway line from Gladstone to nowheresville—to a post-office box on the side of the road by a station called Blackwater. A little post-office box with Blackwater written on it—that's where the railway line went! This was a make-money project. The income created by that railway line now amounts to some $50 billion a year. For an outlay of $1 billion, we get $50 billion a year for 50 years.

That has not happened in this place since I've been in here. If there is a significant make-money project that has occurred, I haven't seen it. I don't wish to denigrate the past Prime Minister—he's a friend of mine; I like him—on the building of the NBN, because I think the building of the NBN is a wonderful thing, but it's not a make-money project. There's a fundamental difference between building a railway line to Mount Isa so you can open up the biggest mineral province in the world and building a railway line to the Gold Coast. It's great for the Gold Coast people. I'm pleased for them. Good on you. But does it make money? No. It will absorb money forever. No-one would remotely expect it to pay for itself. All commuter lines are subsidised. I've never denied the right of city people to have their commuter lines subsidised, but the development of the country is being sacrificed.

I deeply regret that the minister has left the parliament, because I've had discussions with her this week on a tunnel through the range to open up the giant mineral province between Georgetown and Chillagoe. We talk about new minerals; it is the home of the new age minerals—the nickel, the cobalt, the copper, the cadmium. The home of those metals is in the Georgetown mineral fields stretching across to Chillagoe. They're all behind Cairns, but we can't get them out. We can't have a port in the gulf. It's all just flood plain in the gulf, with very shallow water, so you can't go to the gulf, and Townsville is a 2½-thousand-kilometre round trip away, but Cairns is a few hundred kilometres away. In the case of the Chillagoe field, it's less than 100km away. But we can't open it up. It was much bigger than the North West Minerals Province for nearly 100 years, but we can't open it up because we can't get the product out.

Corruption built the first railway line to Mount Isa, and I'm ashamed to admit I was then in the government—no, I wasn't, actually, but I was soon afterwards. And corruption built the second railway line to Mount Isa, when we had to duplicate it. It seems to me the only way we ever get anything of value done in the state of Queensland might be by going down the corruption trail! Whether that's true or whether that's not, the fact is that that railway line to Mount Isa cost a thousand million dollars and produces for the economy of Australia some $6 billion or $7 billion every single year. That's a make-money project as opposed to an absorb-money project.

I'm speaking against this project because if I have a choice on spending the money it's for digging a lousy little one-kilometre or two-kilometre tunnel through that range to open up that giant mineral province stretching from Mareeba right across to Georgetown, almost to the Gulf of Carpentaria and below. To open it up, we need the tunnel. Now, that's a make-money project. Every single year there would be money pouring into the coffers of the government through tax revenue, whether it's PAYE tax or whether it's company tax or whatever the hell it is.

The other thing is that I very strongly support the Greens amendment on this, because, if there is any possibility of Australia getting any monetary benefit out of this, it goes if it's not in Australia. All of our savings in Australia—and I don't think many people in this place understand this—go into superannuation. Up until 1995, 60 per cent of the superannuation moneys went into government securities, as they should. We want some sort of guarantee that the money is going to be there when we arrive at retirement age—and I'm a bit more concerned about this than other people here are, of course. Is that money going to be there? Where's the money going now? Ten per cent of Australia's income is going into the superannuation funds and, from there, it goes into speculation. It all goes into the stock market—buying and selling shares to each other, a giant Ponzi scheme. I very much share the views here of the Greens party and the other people on the crossbench. We seem to be the only people who are worried about it. Well, there are going to be a lot of people worried about it when they retire and they work out who's to blame. And I'll tell you who's to blame: people on my right, people on my left, but not the people behind me—not us.

Twenty years ago there was $70 billion going into the share market. There is now $1,700 billion going into the share market, almost every cent of it coming from your savings and my savings and every other Australians' savings. John Maynard Keynes was quoted recently by our past prime minister Kevin Rudd. Let me quote John Maynard Keynes, who may be the greatest economist in human history; he is most certainly one of the three greatest economists in human history. He described the stock market as a roulette wheel. Well, I'd describe it as a Ponzi scheme, but I'm not going to argue with you if you want to call it a roulette wheel. You tell me that some silly little young kid has slithered out of Sydney University into a union office and then slithered out of that into a superannuation board and that he knows whether we should develop the Cainozoic intrusion formation, calcitic formation, or whether we shouldn't. And, if you didn't understand what I just said—and I'm sure you don't—don't invest a cent in mining. There wouldn't be one single person on a superannuation board in Australia that would know what the hell I was talking about—not one.

What we're talking about here is putting billions of dollars into self-gratification. We have a saying in the bush: you can spend it on air-conditioning the living room or you can spend it on watering the bottom paddock. If you've got no water in the bottom paddock, you can't run any cattle there. If you put water in the paddock, you suddenly turn it into a productive resource. So you can spend it on self-indulgence, or you can spend it on development. It's whether you want to spend it on your own luxury or whether you want to give a future for your great-grandkids. That's really the decision being made here.

Well, in the last 30 years that I have been in this place, I am not aware of there having been a single developmental policy. If you lived in Cairns, you would understand the absolute necessity for digging that 1½-kilometre tunnel through a range to open up the giant, vast mineral field. We congratulate the government on giving us $210 million for the development of the new age minerals which stretch from Chillagoe through Georgetown, all the way down to Julia Creek, Cloncurry—my homeland—and Mount Isa, and it's called the North West Minerals Province. The vanadium deposits north of Julia Creek, Richmond and Hughenden stretch 200 kilometres west and then 500 kilometres south, all the way down through Winton, into the Northern Territory. They're the biggest vanadium deposits in the world. What are the new batteries made of? Vanadium. You've got one of the most red-hot minerals in existence there.

We've also got it up in the northern end, but we can't get it out. We've got no railway line and we've got no highway. We've got a little bush track—a beautiful bush track called the Kuranda Range road—and the government is putting $200 million into that. I don't criticise the federal government, because they're obviously doing it on the advice of the state government, and of course the state government is entirely based in Brisbane, nearly 3,000 kilometres away from Cairns. Half a million people live in the greater Cairns region, but we might as well be on the moon. 'The road needs fixing up, so we'll just give $200 million for the road.' The road doesn't need fixing up. Maybe the greatest minerals province on earth needs to be opened up. You keep talking about new-age minerals, well, where are they? They are almost exclusively in that zone.

The federal government, God bless them, have acknowledged that the new-age minerals are in that zone between Mount Isa and Chillagoe and Mareeba, right across North Queensland. That's where they are, but in the top half we can't get them out. In the bottom half we can go back on the railway line, which was built on corruption, as I say, the first time. And it was built on corruption the second time. The only way we could get it built was to give a $200,000 gift to each of the cabinet ministers. We had to do that in the 1920s and we had to do it again in the 1970s. Maybe it's a good form of government. I don't know. At least it gets things done.

But further north we have the situation where, with half of that mineral field, we cannot get the product out. Minister, unless we get a tunnel through the range, there is no way we can get it out. We can't go to the gulf. It is all flood plain. It's supershallow water. They tried to do that, and the boat turned over, and they lost $25 million worth. It's very, very cyclone prone as well. No-one would ever think of getting it out through the Gulf of Carpentaria. You can go to Townsville, but that would require pretty close to a 3,000-kilometre round trip—most certainly an over-2,000-kilometre round trip—by road. It's just not going to happen. No one's going to cart ore on a 2,000-kilometre round trip by road transport.

So half of the mineral field can't be opened up unless we get a tunnel through the range. A tunnel through the range would be like a tunnel from one side of Parliament House to the other side. That's a kilometre. I think we need a kilometre and a half, and no-one is arguing against me on that. We need a kilometre-and-a-half tunnel, and then we can open up the mineral province. There were people arguing in Brisbane about building that railway line, and they decided not to till they all got $200,000 put in their pocket. Every single cabinet minister took $200,000 in the 1920s. (Time expired)

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