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

by leave—I move Katter's Australian Party amendments (1) to (7) revised:

(1) Clause 5, page 4 (line 2), Before "In this", insert "(1)".

(2) Clause 5, page 10 (after line 25), at the end of the clause, add:

(2) A reference in this Act to a regional or rural area of Australia is a reference to a geographic area that is located outside major towns and cities, sometimes classified as the countryside.

(3) A reference in this Act to a remote area of Australia is a reference to an area that typically has a low population density and is considerably secluded, being geographically isolated or 4 hours or more drive from a large town or city and from the goods, services and facilities offered by large towns and cities.

(3) Clause 6, page 10 (line 27), before "The Ministers", insert "(1)".

(4) Clause 6, page 10 (after line 30), at the end of the clause, add:

(2) Investment in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia must be declared to be a priority area of the Australian economy.

(5) Clause 17, page 15 (after line 16), at the end of the clause, add:

(4) The strategies and policies followed by the Corporation, as mentioned in paragraph (1)(a), must require there to be a focus on high priority allocation of funds for projects in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia due to the historical and existing disparity in infrastructure funding between city and country locations.

(6) Clause 19, page 16 (after line 25), after subclause (2), insert:

(2A) Despite subsection (2), the Board members must include a person who is appointed to represent regional, rural and remote areas of Australia.

(7) Clause 70, page 41 (lines 24 and 25), omit "is solely or mainly Australian-based", substitute "only involves companies that are solely, or at least 50%, Australian owned and operated".

This bill is particularly relevant to the Kennedy electorate. The town with the biggest income for Australia of anywhere in Australia is Mount Isa. We, a little tiny town of 20,000 people, produce around $5 million a year in export earnings for our country. That's because we have minerals. We have the new-age minerals, massive lithium deposits, at Georgetown. We have massive vanadium deposits at Julia Creek and Richmond and, arguably, at Winton. If I just refer to my notes here, we have vanadium, lithium, cobalt, copper, lead, silicon, phosphate and uranium. All of those minerals, and many other rare earths which I'm not going to enumerate, proliferate in our area.

Now, you have a choice. We are not a mining country, even though two-thirds to three-quarters of our exports are mining products. We are not a mining country, because a mining country mines it out of the ground and sells metals. We mine it out of the ground and sell the ground; we are a quarrying country. We were once described as an advanced industrial country. Well, I can't see any evidence that we're an industrial country at all, let alone an advanced industrial country. But God bless the people of my homeland who were determined that Australians would sell pure copper, that Australians would sell extremely high-grade lead, that Australians would sell zinc—not ground.

We are on the cusp of opening up all these new minerals, and this parliament has the choice of letting the minerals go, as you have done with bauxite at Weipa. I cannot believe that the Queensland government and the government of Australia have allowed bauxite to go out of Weipa. Comalco approached the Queensland government, in the form of Sir Leo Hielscher—two of the six biggest bridges in Australia are named after Leo Hielscher, and quite rightly so—arguably, with Bjelke-Petersen and Les Thiess and three others, the architect of the Queensland economic miracle. When Comalco came in and said they wanted to export bauxite, Leo nearly killed himself laughing. How funny! 'You think you're going to export bauxite, do you! That doesn't happen in Queensland.' Now it does.

Gladstone is one of the most vibrant cities in this nation because that government spent a squillion dollars building the biggest power station in the world at the time at Gladstone. Economies of scale meant we could compete against anyone. And, unlike the governments of Australia, the much-maligned Bjelke-Petersen government said, 'We will take one per cent of your coal for free', so our electricity was run on free coal, negligible labour costs, even though they were on more money than members of parliament. They probably deserved to be on more money than members of parliament as well. But because there was so much power going and because the units were so big and so efficient the labour costs were minimal, the coal costs were nil—absolute zero. Now, we are sending out bauxite. All I can say is if this initiative makes a difference then that is a very good thing. (Time expired)

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