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

There is a Sunmap map of North Queensland from 1980, and written across the map is 'the best natural grasslands in Australia'. Now in this area there is the reality of a barren wilderness: 23 million hectares of leafless prickly trees destroying all ground cover and causing massive erosion, and a wasteland with a million rampaging pigs destroying all flora and fauna. When we meet Jesus, he is going to say to us: 'I gave you the sixth biggest river in Australia. I gave you the most beautiful rich blacksoil plains in the world. What did you do with these gifts?' Prickly acacia spread through and completely destroyed a tenth of North Queensland. Gone are the kangaroos, the birds and the dunnarts.

The HIPCo irrigation project at Hughenden will deliver a different, restored and improved homeland—my homeland. It regenerates the mid-west. 'I'm keeping the flame on a windswept plain—a plain that will keep you broke till you go insane.' These are the words of a great poet, author and commentator on 'Waltzing Matilda'. Fifty years ago, the 10 acres that my wife and I have in Charters Towers had a single tree on it. It had two eroding gullies, scattered tufts of wire grass, and over 400 chinee bushes and rubber vine. It now has thick knee-high Urochloa and buffel. The gullies are rock. It runs two horses. (Time expired)

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