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

There have been three deaths in three weeks on construction sites. This government is pressing ahead with—and this is the only word I can use—the oppression of a particular union that represents those people.

One of those sites was non-unionised. They did not even stop work. It was an extremely dangerous work situation. When the police arrived they were so disgusted that they ordered the management to stop work immediately.

I went to a stoppage. I thought it may be an irresponsible stoppage by people in Brisbane. They said there was danger in the tunnels. There was another stoppage three weeks later. I went back to the second stoppage and there was a man dying as a result of the dangerous conditions that existed. It turned out that man was the brother of the mayor of my home town. I knew Sam Beveridge very well, and he died.

I represent Mount Mulligan, where 72 people were blown to death in one explosion. I represent Mount Leyshon Mine at Charters Towers, where 23 men were blown to pieces in one hour. And the only reason we are not getting blown to pieces, or falling down manholes or having cement walls collapsing on us is because there are some strong people left in trade unions in this country who stand up for principles that need to be stood up for.

And to be associated with a government that is removing the right to remain silent—we have all watched the movies, we all see that you have the right to remain silent. Yes, you do, except if you are a trade unionist in Australia under a Liberal government.

The government has discretionary powers for apprehension. We died in 1215 at Runnymede to get a document called Magna Carta. It said that you do not have discretionary powers, Mr Government, to pluck a person off the street: you must have a basis for it. No basis here.

Mr Entsch interjecting—

I see the honourable member for Leichhardt laughing and smiling. His electorate is right on the edge of Mount Mulligan. He knows how many people died there and he knows why they died. And he is sitting there, laughing! So I want to put on the public record that the member of Leichhardt thinks this is funny. I am sure the people of Far North Queensland will appreciate his sense of humour.

If the member for Leichhardt would ever get off his backside we will move on: we have five million head of cattle in North Queensland, and there are 140,000 head of cattle in Cape York. That is all: 140,000 head of cattle in Cape York. It has three times the rainfall, almost, of Victoria—the same size—and Victoria has 4½ million head of cattle.

A good example is that we have five million head of cattle in North Queensland. If you give us, every cattleman, including the member for Leichhardt, a couple of hundred of hectares of irrigation, and if you give our little towns a microirrigation scheme of a few thousand hectares, we will give you not five million head of cattle, but nine million. We have two dreadful problems: we have climatic droughts, which come around every 10 to 15 years, and we have annual protein droughts, which occur every single year. We can eliminate both of those, or at least we will have a weapon to overcome them, if we are given on-farm irrigation—just a couple of hundred hectares for each operator or station owner, and maybe about 15 microschemes schemes of about 7,000 hectares at the Georgetowns and Hughendens and Richmonds.

If you give us that, instead of turning off one in six head of cattle as we do in Northern Queensland—whereas the rest of Australia turns of one in three—we will turn off one in three. This is $7 billion extra dollars for the Australian economy, just by giving us the right to take a little bit of water out of the Mitchell River, the biggest river in Australia—bigger than the Murray-Darling. There is hardly a single farm on the entire Mitchell River. We just want a few graziers to take a couple of hundred hectares, not 10,000 hectares like they have in other areas.

The town of Hughenden has worked for some 20-odd years, and put in huge sacrifices of time, money and effort, for a tiny little scheme there. We appreciate the federal government, we appreciate minister Joyce, who has said that he will look at $2.5 million to cost out the scheme and to draw up the scheme. Not to assess it or look at it—we have burnt up $300 million in assessments and looking at it. We do not want any money to look at it. We do not want to waste any more public funds on that. We just want immediate drawing up of an engineering plan and the money to cost it, so we can come back to the government and say, 'This is how much it will cost—can you give us a bit of help with some guaranteed loans.'

The way we are looking after North Queensland, we have 100 million hectares. Seven million of that 100 million has gone under the prickly acacia tree. It has completely destroyed what were the best natural grasslands—and I quote from Sunmap of Queensland—completely destroyed by the prickly acacia tree. (Time expired)