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

Drought has scourged Australia for the last 250 years that we know of, but, in all probability, it has scourged our country for 40,000 or 50,000 years. The only solution to drought is to grow grass. The only place you can grow grass in Australia where we're not growing grass now is in North Queensland, where, north of the line from Tennant Creek to Mount Isa to Townsville, every creek and river run every year. If they don't have a river, they just have a flood and a series of waterholes. We just need to hold back a little tiny bit of that floodwater. As the great Ernie Bridge from Western Australia said, 'All that we are saying is that the mighty rivers of Australia, on their annual rampage to the sea, pay a small tribute to those people that live along their banks'—a magnificent contribution.

To be very technical, Charters Towers and Hughenden are going ahead as a result of Scott Morrison's actions, and we pay the Prime Minister a very great tribute and appreciation for that. Those projects are templates for another 20 projects standing behind them. They can run, when completed, some 1.4 million head of cattle. There are 23 million head of cattle in Australia; we turn off eight million a year. But they can run— (Time expired)