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

$540 million was given to the National Party to build dams in Australia. Every cent of that $540 million is gone, and we have not even got an engineering plan. To add insult to injury, they have given the $28 million that I secured for Hells Gate Dam back to an organisation called SMEC, whose competence levels would be lower than the doorstep on this Parliament House. They have completely destroyed the aspirations of this nation for the Bradfield scheme. The money has been given back to TEL, Townsville Enterprise Limited, who get $3 million for doing nothing except handing it on to SMEC, a bunch of towering incompetents whose proposal will destroy Bradfield forever. Bradfield would see the irrigation of an area from Longreach to Winton to Cloncurry and back to the coast. The whole of inland north-eastern Australia is going to be destroyed by a bunch of incompetents, and the government has got a lot to answer for. This needs to be fixed up and it needs to be fixed up now. For TEL there is going to be a big reckoning. The bloke they put in charge of it, according to the newspapers, is up on fraud charges. I don't know anything about him, because he never spoke to me. I got the first $3 million and this $28 million, and he wouldn't speak to me, nor would the engineers. Consequently, everyone else in Northern Queensland wouldn't speak to me either. (Time expired)