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

Continuing on from where I left off in the budget debate, the budget proposes providing $5,000 million. Well, there is a bit of licence involved in that statement, since in fact in the life of this parliament it is $1 million, not $5,000 million. As much as I love our honourable Treasurer, our honorary North Queenslander, Mr Hockey, with all due respect, a promise to do something when you are not the government is no promise at all. But let us be positive about it and say that it is an expression of interest by the LNP to move in that direction. And we would very much hope that the ALP—we had a very positive attitude from Prime Minister Rudd on these issues as well—that both sides of the parliament go ahead with no confrontation but with an air of working together.

If every station or property in the northern half of Queensland were allocated 200 hectares of irrigation land, at the present moment all they would have the right to do would be to pasture cattle. They have a right to graze cattle. They do not have any ownership rights—and you as an ex-lawyer would appreciate the difference, Madam Speaker. There are no rights in rem; it is only rights in personam. But if they are given 200 hectares of freehold irrigation title, that is worth $2 million, and it would greatly help a lot of these people to survive in their current situation. But infinitely more important: the great Freddy Tritton, one of the great pioneers of irrigation in northern Australia, and his son, Corbett—who may even go on to greater heights than his father—and I worked out that 80 per cent of the stations are on a stream that flows every single year. So, every single one of those cattlemen can get enough water to do 200 hectares of irrigation. That would drought-proof the northern half of Australia.

It gives me no joy, but I have a picture of Australia, and I have left it downstairs, with both Victoria and Cape York Peninsula marked in red. They are of identical size. Cape York Peninsula and Victoria, in area, are of identical size. There are two huge differences between the two. One has three times as much water as the other one. Cape York has nearly three times as much rainfall as Victoria. And one has 4.2 million head of cattle, while Cape York has a little tiny 140,000 head of cattle. What is going wrong here?

I had the pleasure of sitting with the Minister for Agriculture, and he said that the problem is title deeds. Yes, that is part of the problem, but the second problem is access to the irrigation water. It has been the policy of both sides of this parliament that we cannot touch any of North Queensland's waters. Well, we have more than half of Australia's entire rainfall run-off, and of the 230 million megalitres run-off, we are using only 1.3 million. By world standards, the average usage is 20 per cent. On the Murray-Darling we are using 30 per cent. In North Queensland, we are not using any of the water at all. But if you do, the scheme is on the Coleman and Norman.

We need 30 1,200 hectare blocks of irrigation land to be able to provide a smooth highway for our beef cattle into Indonesia. Instead of going back to Townsville, which is ridiculous, heading 2,000 kilometres in exactly the wrong direction, they can go straight out through the gulf. We need to facilitate that. We will eliminate drought. Well, you can never eliminate it; you will still get pain. But you can green chop on the 200 hectares and you can run 2,000 or 3,000 breeders so you can live to fight another day. All of this grand vista of opportunity can be awakened.

In the mid-west towns, particularly Hughenden, Richmond and Julia Creek, the populations have dropped to one-third of what they were 30 or 40 years ago. We can restore those populations and make them prosperous little towns— (Time expired)