Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Well I hope that I do not because I do not want to be personal in my comments. I do not direct personal attacks where I can avoid them, unless I am really provoked, but I do want to address what the former speaker said. The member for Wannon said the output for agriculture in this country is good. The honourable minister at the dispatch box, the Assistant Minister for Education, represents a country area in Australia. I would like to throw to Minister Ley the challenge that she will answer what I am going to say about agriculture in Australia. This is not an opinion of a member of parliament; these are the actual ABS statistics.

The Weekly Timespublished a major article saying just that, and I hope that the minister at the dispatch box reads the Weekly Timesprobably the only agricultural paper in the country worth reading, most certainly in Queensland. The Weekly Times said that Australia is going to be a net importer of fruit and vegetables. I think this is quite extraordinary. Australia is already a net importer—not going to be, but is a net importer of fruit and vegetables. I got five separate sets of statistics out from the Library and there was no doubt whatsoever that Australia is a net importer of fruit and vegetables.

We have people in this parliament who come in here and make stupid statements that outrage and anger the farming community of Australia—not anger or enrage them to the point where they change their vote, but anger and enrage them and make them very cynical towards all politicians, which they are entitled to be. They say, 'We are going to be the food bowl of Asia.' How ridiculous—how utterly ridiculous! We will be a net importer of food from Asia and there is no doubt about that. Let me return to fruit and vegetables. We are a net importer of fruit and vegetables, we are a net importer of pork and we are a very big net importer of seafood. Five or six years ago, we were big exporters in all of those items. To give you some sort of perspective, if you draw a growth line on prawn and fish farming in China and extrapolate it out to 2050, then it is a fair call that almost all of the protein on earth will be coming from prawn and fish farms in China. I am not saying that China will increase its present production levels but it can. It does not need any area of land, not that China is short of land covering maybe a fifth of the surface area of the world. Even if it was short of land, prawns and fish can be produced in the ocean in nets. So those are the three items where we are already importers. That fruit and vegetable figure is prior to SPC Ardmona, Golden Circle, Simplot and McCain all getting into serious trouble. I predicted in this place on many occasions that unless something was done about the car industry we would have no car industry within seven years. Well, I was dead wrong—it was seven months after I made that statement that all three of them announced their closure. I find it very difficult to see how fruit and vegetable processing in Australia will be able to remain viable. It is no fault of the workers in those plants and it is no fault of the management in those plants. Rather, it is the problem we have in agriculture.

Let me switch from fruit and vegetables and pork and seafood to the major players in agriculture in Australia, starting with the beef industry. Our figures show, before this drought and before the wicked decision by the ALP government to ban live cattle exports, we were down to 23 million head of cattle from a herd level of 33 million head—and it should be more than that today. The wool industry was the biggest exporter in this country before Mr Keating, as Treasurer of Australia, wrecked it completely. Until that point, wool was a bigger export item than coal. This country was still riding on the sheep's back in 1990 before that person destroyed the industry. The sheep herd has fallen 63 per cent. Sixty-three per cent of that great industry which kept this nation going for nearly two centuries has all but vanished—wool is not up there as one of the serious export items anymore. The third item I want to talk about is dairying. No-one in this place needs to be told about dairying. We told, we pleaded, we howled and we cajoled, saying 'Do not deregulate the dairy industry! Look at what has happened in Victoria, where they deregulated it into the Melbourne markets. Do you want that all over Australia?' They would not listen so they deregulated the dairy industry. The dairy herd is down 31 per cent. The export of dairy products is down very significantly, though I do not have the figure with me at the present moment.

When a person gets up in this place and says the outlook for agriculture is bright I would like to know where it is bright. I would like to know where this brightness is coming from. I went to a meeting in Meridan where 1,200 wheat farmers turned up. I have attended three or four meetings in Victoria and there would have been over 1,000 people at each of those meetings. They tell me over 6,000 people attended those meetings. Near the area of the honourable minister at the dispatch box, the member for Farrer, 14,000 people came to the meeting in Griffith. So, we have all of these happy farmers who are doing so well and can look forward to a bright future! I want a member of the government or the opposition to stand up and tell me where this brightness is coming from. Maybe they are referring to the grape industry or the citrus industry—or what is left of those industries. And you ask what is left of those industries. It has got nothing to do with the drought.

We praise the minister and the government for improving this proposal which came forward from the Labor government. We thank the Labor government and the former Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister, Wayne Swan, for introducing this concept. But, I want to put on record the people from whom this concept originated. This concept originated with the Mareeba Rural Action Council. I have never seen such a band of tenacious and unrelenting fighters. The honourable member for Mallee spoke in this debate earlier; he was head of the Victorian Farmers Federation. I would like to know what our farming organisations have done for us over the last 30 years. I would like to know one thing that they have done for us in the last 30 years. Almost every single initiative that has been worth two bob has come from spontaneous, people-on-the-ground, grassroots movements. I speak with great anger because my industry, the cattle industry, was nigh on destroyed by the inaction of the MLA, the NFF and all of the other bodies associated with the cattle industry who knew what was going on in Indonesia and chose to do nothing about it. When we saw what we saw on Four Cornerswe criticised them for it—nothing was done by any of those organisations, including the Victorian Farmers Federation, including New South Wales Farmers Association and including AgForce in Queensland. None of those organisations moved to do anything about sending stun-guns and knocking boxes up to Indonesia and acting on what needed to be acted upon immediately.

The people who have led this fight that has culminated in a great decision by the previous Labor government and an excellent enhancement of that decision by the existing government are: Johnny Gambino—no-one can underestimate the importance of this person to rural action throughout Australia; he was one of the founders of the serious mango industry that we have in Australia today; Bernie O'Shea, who many times appeared on television to the great benefit of every single farmer in this country even though he does not come from a farming background; Max Srhoj, the person who pushed me to get out of the party system in this country as it existed so I could stand up and fight properly for the people I am supposed to be paid to represent, and one of the most successful farmers and one of the very few successful farmers that we have up on the Atherton Tableland area, which produces about five or six per cent of the fruit and vegetables we are still producing in Australia; Ned Bruschetto, who spent some years on the council up there as an excellent councillor; Vince Mete; Johnny Myrteza; Peter Henderson; Kevin McGrath who, again, served many years on the council; Joe Moro, who has been a great leader up there for many years; Lidio Nicolosi; and Scotty Dixon, who will fight till the day that he is pushing up daisies—what a great asset he has been to the team up there.

Why are we in this situation? We are in this situation because our RBA interest rates have been set at 3.2 per cent, on average, for the past two or three years. The rest of the world averages 0.27 per cent. That is a 1,000 per cent difference. It is not a 10 per cent or a 50 per cent difference; it is a 1,000 per cent difference! Every farming organisation and farming representative in this place should be screaming it from the rooftops on a daily basis—heaven only knows I tried to. If you have interest rates that are 1,000 per cent out of step with the rest of the world then clearly you are going to have a currency which is wildly overvalued. That value should be at US50c. That is not my opinion; that is the opinion of the international monetary markets.

Mr Keating did something very good: he allowed the dollar to free float, and it went down to US49c. When Mr Costello came in he did a very good thing: he allowed the dollar to free float. These people advocate free markets. They both did the right thing. They were as good as their word; they came in and they allowed the dollar to free float. And it went to US52c. So, when the dollar was allowed to free float, it went to US49c and US52c, and then our terms of trade deteriorated disastrously from that point. We were running current account deficits of $10,000 million; we are now running a current account deficit of $60,000 million. That is creeping up to a significant percentage of the entire budget of the Australian government.

Worldwide, the level of support for agriculture subsidies and tariffs is 41 per cent—you can get this information from the library or from the OECD website. Australia's was 4.5 per cent the last time the OECD released international figures. We have the Coles/Woolworth situation. No other country on earth has a situation like that. In America, the big two have a 23 per cent market share and the Americans are squealing blue murder. The big two here have somewhere over 85 per cent of the marketplace. We need collective bargaining. When it was taken away from us in the milk industry, in the sugar industry and in other industries, we were crucified. under collective bargaining in the year 2000 we were getting 59c for fresh milk in North Queensland. Our farmers are now being paid 48½c.

Moving to ethanol, ethanol fixes up the cattle industry, the sugar industry and the beef industry. We would not need drought support if we had an ethanol— (Time expired)

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