Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw that sewage bit. I said to him, 'Peter, we're not going to savage your public servants; we're not going to play politics with people's livelihoods.' This proposition of wild rivers and the remedy to overcome that is playing politics with people's livelihoods. When I raised wild rivers with him Peter Beattie told me to my face: 'Bill, I had to do a deal to get the inner-city Brisbane preferences with the Wilderness Society and that is why we have done it. Eventually it will be turned into a World Heritage area.'

With the latest science it is an absolute insult to the human race with respect to the global food task to think that ownership of this country cannot be given as a commercial advantage to our Indigenous people. This is a disgrace. Unlike a lot of people in this place I have been and camped on the Cape York Peninsula and I understand the country. There are marvellous opportunities from some of those rivers within the first kilom­etre. They are as good as the Murrumbidgee River or the Liverpool Plains. Sure, there is a wet season and there is a dry season and we learnt the hard way from Humpty Doo that, if you go about it the wrong way, you end up with a mess on your hands. But to say to Indigenous people, 'We're not going to let you have a commercial agricultural adv­antage,' when they are going to be closest to the biggest market—two thirds of the world's population is going to live on their doorstep. You cannot tell me that the UN is going to sort out the people of Bangladesh or the 260 million people, up to 400 million people by 2070, who live on the great northern plain in China and who will have to be moved if they do not engineer a water solution. The UN is the world's largest most corrupt bureau­cracy—it does some good work but it is corrupt like most governments in Asia. Here we are today saying the Indigenous opport­unity in Cape York Peninsula ought to be tourism. Get your photo taken with a blackfella and a spear, what sort of crap is that?

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN (11:28): Order! Senator Heffernan.

What sort of rubbish is that? I cannot believe that Senator Fielding does not get this.