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

The McKean sisters were very famous in their own right before the coming of Reg Lindsay, who married one of the sisters, and Slim Dusty, who married the other sister, Joy McKean. For those of us who love those yodelling tunes, they were arguably the best yodellers in the world at the time. Joy—and I think if he were alive, Slim would agree with me—chose his material. She wrote his material, and she rewrote the material that he used. A lot of the great songs came from Manilla in the honourable member's electorate, from Stan Coster. Stan, like me, is a bit of a rough person, and there needed to be a little 'fining out'. But, if you want to know about Australia, then listen to Slim Dusty songs. My mother was a very sophisticated city person, and she brought us up on Slim Dusty songs. At Slim Dusty's funeral, there were two former prime ministers and a prime minister. There were three ministers. That will never ever happen again.

The first time I went along to watch a show was in Charters Towers. For 20 or 30 years, we had as big a music festival as Tamworth had later on. The singer Sherrie Austin, who ranked at No. 3 in America, got her start at Charters Towers. Lee Kernaghan got his start there as well. When I went along to see Slim that night, I couldn't get into the hall, with 500 people. It's a town of 10,000 people. I couldn't get on the footpath! I was in the middle of the road, and I thought that we've just got to ride with Slim and embrace being an Australian and being proud of being an Australian.

For the Olympic Games in Melbourne, we wanted an image for Australia and so people were in elastic sided boots, Driza-Bones and rough-rider hats. Whether city people like it or not, the essential image of Australia lies in the heartland—as it does in every country in the world, actually. If you want to know about Russia, go to the steppes. I want to quote from one of the songs. It was written by Coster, actually, but rewritten by Joy. He was in a pub speaking to an old returned serviceman, and he went home and wrote down what the serviceman said: 'You say you belong to Australia, my friend, and, like me, you'd die for this land to defend. But let us be honest, it's sad but it's true: Australia, my friend, doesn't belong to you. We've been sold out by the powers that be, to big, wealthy nations way over the sea. They tried to take us with bayonets and lead, but now they've decided to buy us instead. I wonder if the ghosts of the fallen can see the crime and corruption and vast poverty—a lost generation of youth on the dole adrift on life's oceans without any goals. I once had a dream of my country so grand, where rivers outback irrigated the land, with dams and canals in that wasteland out there, and big inland cities with work everywhere. But then I woke from dreaming to reality: Australia's wealth, it goes over the sea.'

If there's a reason why I'm in this place, it is in Slim Dusty's words, which of course were written and inspired by Joy McKean. God bless you, Joy.

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