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

It doesn't matter when it was, you did it! You were the free marketeers that did it. You completely destroyed the wool industry. I wouldn't be laughing—the lady in the second row there thinks it's funny that the wool industry in Australia vanished under that new regulation. She thinks it's funny. I don't know her name but I hope it's recorded in Hansard that she's laughing at the idea that the wool industry in Australia was completely destroyed. Let her talk, because the more she talks the more people are going to understand who she is.

Food prices in Australia—in fairness to the initiative by the federal government, Woolworth and Coles were allowed to grow from 50.1 per cent of the food market to well over 80 per cent of the food market. Now they have a duopoly position. I'm not blaming them. They're there to maximise profits. Food mark-ups went from 130 per cent back in the nineties to 240 per cent today under your free-market policies. Medical insurance has gone up almost exactly 400 per cent, electricity has gone up 412 per cent, housing has gone up 811 per cent and motorcars have gone up over 500 per cent. There has to be an increase in wages. In light of all that, there has to be an increase in wages. But if you don't increase the protection then vast industries in this country are going to go broke. You've already wrecked about half of agriculture—that has gone—and now you're going to wreck the rest of it.

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