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

I consider us very lucky, and it is very timely, to have Minister Joyce in a key portfolio with respect to water. I thought the minister might like to hear this. We deeply appreciate his presence there and we hold high hopes that he will be able to bring to fruition where we want to go with water, which is where the water is, which is of course in Northern Australia and specifically in North Queensland. We want to add that Minister Lynam has the makings of a very good minister in the state government. We are uniquely placed at the present moment to move aggressively forward in this area.

The history is pretty simple, and I suppose I am a major player. The two great leaders are a bloke called Harry Clarke who was the Chairman of the Dalrymple Shire, an area as big as Tasmania, and Freddy Tritton the long-serving—30 years, I think—chairman of the Richmond Shire Council and the great pioneer in water in North Queensland, particularly inland North Queensland. They told me to go out after the Bradfield Scheme, so I did some checking up and found this Bradfield was a pretty smart bloke. He built the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He built the underground railway system in Sydney that is still being used today. It won the international prize—

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