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

We are placing before the NAIF and the people of Australia and the government of Australia a proposal to have irrigation at Hughenden, which is about the most central town on the land mass of Queensland. Hughenden had some 400 or 500 railway employees, and the Labor Party government in Queensland sold the railways in the knowledge that the railways would be closed down, with the exception of the mineral operations and the suburban commuter system in Brisbane. The railways were sold. The railways no longer carried any goods, and all goods were carried by road transport. The increase in cost to us was 600 per cent. The bloke who argued for this became the head of Aurizon, which was the new railway owner. He was on $300,000 as a public servant, and he said, 'We have to have privatisation.' He then paid himself $6.1 million a year.

This little town lost 500 jobs. We've got no football team; we've got no basketball team; we've got no eisteddfod. We've got nothing that enriches the people throughout Australia; it was all taken off us. The Liberal government were a party to it but were not responsible for the deregulation of the wool industry. This was so central to the wool industry that the chairman of the Australian Wool Corporation was the mayor of Hughenden. The rugby league teams comprised shearers, cocky's sons and contractors. We don't have them anymore, so now we don't have rugby league teams. So wool was wiped out. Telstra was privatised, and another 50 or 60 jobs in the area vanished without trace.

What I'm reading out here describes what's happened throughout Australia, not just in Hughenden. We're aspirational grazing in this area. We only get 40 inches of rainfall, which means that most years we don't get any rainfall at all. What you have to do is have huge runs, so there's hardly any graziers there at all. You'd be flat out having 100 graziers in the whole area now, where we would have had maybe 400 or 500 previously in the wool industry days.

So what's happening to this area? I tell you what's happening. Thirty years ago it was written on a map of the mid west, 'The best natural grasslands in Australia.' I'm talking about Hughenden and Cloncurry. Now it's a prickly tree forest. (Time expired)