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

Very shortly we will be putting forward a program to government which requires that each of the landholders in North Queensland at station properties get 200 hectares per station of freehold irrigation land. Anyone holding less than 200 hectares can get total irrigation on their lands. At present there are 162 million megalitres of water in North Queensland. We are using one million megalitres of that. It is not only a very poor reflection on government; it is also immoral. Our nearest neighbours have some 80 million people going to bed hungry every night.

On top of that, we need 30 by 1,200 hectare fattening blocks, growing-out blocks, to feed our live cattle going to Indonesia. It is the most inefficient of industries. At the present moment the cattleman gets $1.60 and the shipper gets 90 cents—so that is $2.50—and $1.50 is not going into profiting the in-betweens but to inefficiencies. This will enable us to walk the cattle from block to block onto a jetty onto a barge straight out into deep-water big ships. I will not go into what is happening at the moment.

The populations in the towns of Cloncurry, Normanton, Georgetown and particularly the mid-west towns of Hughenden, Richmond and Julia Creek have dropped to a quarter of what they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are just vanishing, as are all inland towns in Queensland, off the face of the earth. The irrigation scheme in Hughenden is shovel ready now and those in Richmond and Einasleigh will be soon. The UBurIS scheme south of Charters Towers involves the production of $1200 million worth of ethanol every year and the production of about $200 million of electricity a year, while the value of cattle fattening could be $400 million but is most certainly $200 million. That scheme requires nothing of government except a guarantee on the funds needed—(Time expired)