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

Every patriotic Australian should be concerned about the Murray-Darling. A very large section of my book on the history of Australia is taken up with the greatest achievement of the Australian people: one of the 27 greatest iconic engineering projects in the world, the Snowy Mountains scheme. This place attempted to sell the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme and then failed in the attempt. It was reversed because the people of the Murray-Darling Basin rose up in righteous anger, and it was their doing, and only their doing, that had a decision in this place reversed.

We have a similar situation with the Murray-Darling cutbacks proposed at the moment. We had only three people in this House at the time—Mr Andren, Mr Windsor and me—so we only had three votes in this place to oppose the sale of the Snowy Hydro. Yet we won—we won because the people rose up in righteous anger.

The fight over the continued cutbacks in the Murray-Darling is a fight that is going to be won by the people of those areas standing on their hind legs and fighting. But they do have at least one representative in here who is utterly determined that there should be no further cutbacks. Eighty-five shops have closed in Mildura. They tell me even more have closed in Griffith. Most certainly, one in five farms in Mildura have closed down. And they tell me there had been a similar number in Griffith. (Time expired)

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