Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

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

I rise to speak on the third reading. I'm entitled to, as I understand it. You may correct me, Mr Deputy Speaker Gillespie. I just want to comment upon the amendment moved by my colleague, the leader of the Greens, in this parliament. The second half of his amendment, I would very much like to have voted for, because the effect of the bill is very much cutting across a fair and competitive marketplace. I've spoken many times in this place how unfair the supposed free market is, with Woolworths and Coles holding the predominant position they have now in petrol as well as other in areas. So I think the second half of that amendment should have been looked at seriously by this parliament. I would plead with the minister to look seriously at the second half of the amendment moved by the leader of the Greens in this parliament.

I remind the House again that all of our petrol, diesel and aviation fuel, the vast bulk of it, comes from Singapore and South Korea, both of which would acknowledge and agree to an embargo on those fuels into Australia if China demanded it. It's a simple, easy thing for China to do. I pointed out to the House that if there was really serious trouble, they would have boats coming in and out of the Port of Darwin, which they own, on all occasions. If one of those boats contained a battalion of marines then they would have the Northern Territory peripheral areas—the North West Minerals Province, Olympic Dam, which has almost all of our metals in Australia. They own the airbase at Merredin, which is across the terminus of the east-west railway and the east-west highway, about 100 kilometres this side of Perth. So now they've got Western Australia and all of the iron ore.

Truly, I don't know whether the rest of Australia would fight for it. I mean, there is no-one living there; we don't care about it. People would not understand the importance of the metals and the iron ore industry to Australia, so I don't even know whether they'd fight for it. I am, of course, a North Queenslander. In the last war, we were handed over. There was not a Brisbane line, actually; all of Australia was handed over to the Japanese, with the exception of the golden nulla nulla—that area from Cairns down through Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and across to Adelaide and Perth. Take that 100-kilometre-wide strip out, and the rest of it was given to Japan, so there is precedent for this sort of action. If I am making Cassandra-like statements, it would have been good if the Trojans had listened to Cassandra, wouldn't it?

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.