Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The last person I spoke to my in electorate yesterday called about a matter of an aeroplane accident and evacuation. Before I left the telephone, he said, 'By the way, by June next year I will be sold up. I will be bankrupted and I believe four of my nine neighbours will go as well.' They have got no money to feed their cattle. I would estimate that maybe 10,000 to 15,000 head of cattle are dying every week now.

In this place we will cry and howl about whales. We will cry and howl about saving some animal out there but we will not worry about a couple of hundred thousand cattle that are going to die very cruelly from malnutrition and starvation because their owners have no money to buy supplementary feed, which is necessary to keep them alive during this time of the year. I would not have to tell you, Deputy Speaker Scott, what the ramifications are of people going out there with a gun to shoot their cattle and the dangers that involves.

The other phone number I have there on my desk to ring is another cattleman whose son committed suicide two months ago. The government of Australia has given us not one single cent. There was $20 million moved from cattle people over there effectively to cattle people over here. In sharp contrast, the state government gave us $80 million in grants and $300 million in two per cent loans when the sugar industry was in trouble.