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

I rise today to vehemently attack the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, SMEC. The parliament must understand that there is a parasitic consultancy service out there. While $540 million was allocated for water development in northern Australia, not one single dam or weir has been built and the consultants are getting fat, lazy and stupid. The proposal that they have put up for Hells Gate dam would completely destroy the vision of the greatest engineer and maybe the greatest Australian the country has ever produced, Dr JJC Bradfield. It would completely destroy it. They are a bunch of little pygmies from overseas—from my experience, most of them are migrants that have come to Australia—and I wonder whether they have any love for this country at all. Their proposal has reduced the Hells Gate dam proposal to a tiny 80 farms for Townsville. There are 960 farms in Ayr and 670 farms in Ingham, but we're going to spend $5.3 billion to create 70 farms. The Bradfield scheme, stage 1, Hells Gate produces seven per cent of Australia's petrol as ethanol—clean, cheap and for forever. It produces 1½ per cent of Australia's electricity—clean, cheap and forever. (Time expired)