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

In a most famous letter by Edward Granville Theodore, whom Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating and a humble person such as myself consider to be the most important person in Australian history, written to Ben Chifley, he said: 'The most important job of government—in fact, the job of government, and I don’t just mean the politicians; I include in that the captains of industry and the media—is to provide jobs for its people.'

Here we have a government initiative to take jobs away from its people. It is a fairly simply formula and it is from the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia—to the shame of the people in his electorate who voted for him. They really should feel ashamed of themselves if they do not know that their member of parliament is out there saying that Americans work for $8 an hour, exactly the same figure that the lady mining magnate from Western Australia uses—$320 a week. We know that she is a very strong supporter of the National Party and their viewpoint. Clearly, they are a very strong supporter of her viewpoint, that we should work for $320 a week in Australia. That is $15,000 a year. In this country, the average price of accommodation is $20,000 a year. Clearly, for starters you would have them living under trees. If you think that that is an exaggeration then you ought to go and look at some of the poor people in your electorates, and it does not matter what electorate you are in. Conditions are rapidly deteriorating for the poor people in Australia. The number of poor people is increasing dramatically.

What is the purpose of government if it is not to create jobs and prosperity for the people? It says: 'Services are up to the private sector now. They will provide your water, your electricity. That will all be privatised.' What do we have government for? Is it there to protect us against the excesses of the corporation? That would be a funny joke! You have to look no further than the infamous Hardie case, where ALP government after ALP government ignored them and then Liberal government after Liberal government ignored them, and people were dying of cancer. That is not new in Australia.

A hundred years ago, one in 30 went down the mines and never came back up again. They died the terrible death of miner's phthisis. The first member for Kennedy was one of those people who left politics dying of miner's phthisis. The second Prime Minister of Australia, Andrew Fisher, saw his father die of miner's phthisis. He left politics dying of miner's phthisis. The first Labor Premier and a world leader in world history came from one of my hometowns, Charters Towers, also left politics dying of miner's phthisis. So do not for the government to protect us from the excesses of the corporation. What the hell is government there for if it is not there to provide jobs and prosperity for its people?

The government think it is its job to take jobs and prosperity away and hand it over to the giant corporations that own the shipping—which is not owned by Australians. They might say, 'We're free marketeers; we're with America. They're free marketeers.' They are on shaky ground there because the Jones Act says of intercoastal shipping—which is what we are talking about here; port to port within Australia, port to port within America—that the ship must be totally American owned, totally American crewed and totally built in America. We are saying the exact opposite of the Jones Act. Either the Americans are correct and the rest of the world are correct or, once again, the government of Australia is Mr Cleverness—the only Mr Cleverness on the planet. I know which way I am going to be betting.

The Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 says that so long as you keep a ship out of Australia for one day more than six months, you do not have to have any pay and conditions; you can employ people on an average Asian wage level of around $5 a day—that is what you can do and that is all right. Only 2,000 Australians will lose their jobs. We ordinary Australians are a bit sick of hearing this. Up in North Queensland, Mr Keating said, 'It's only 900 jobs you're going to lose.' It was 2,000 and they closed the timber industry. 'It is only going to be 4,000 over here and only 6,000 over there. It's only going to be 55,000 in the car industry. It's only been nearly 100,000 in the whitegoods industry. It doesn't matter, there will be something to take its place.'

Have a look at the dollar. Even though you have interest rates a thousand per cent higher than the rest of the world—you are on two per cent, the rest of the world is on 0.2 per cent—you still cannot hold the dollar up. People are saying: 'Hold on, what's this country about?' 'They are about iron ore and coal.' 'Iron ore and coal? We're getting of here real quick.' That is what is happening. To the people who sit in this place—and I wrote a successful history book and I can clearly see the judgement of history and the judgement that it passes upon people—if you think that the judgement of history is not going to catch up to you, you believe in the tooth fairy.

There was a wonderful exchange between Mr Keating—the architect of the modern age; Mr Free Market himself—and George Bush Senior. Mr Keating said, 'President, we would like you to give our Australian farmers a fair go.' George Bush said, 'I'm in the business of looking after American farmers,' and walked off. There is a message there. Would to heaven that we had a leader in Australia who said, 'I'm here to look after Australian farmers not to create free markets.'

The imbecility, which has been one of the contributing factors to him losing his prime ministership, was for the Prime Minister to stand here and clap the minister for trade after the free trade deal with China. They thought it was a good thing. If anyone in Australia thought it was a good thing, I have not run across them. They said it was a good thing for the beef industry. The benefit for the beef industry is 2c on a plate of beef in China. Before the free trade deal it cost you 30 bucks to buy a stake in Beijing. After the free trade deal it was 30 bucks less 2c. That will make a difference to trade with Australia!

People on the government side of this parliament are locked into a belief system that says the problem is wages and that if we cut the wages—to quote the Deputy Prime Minister—to American levels of $8 an hour all will be well in this country. It is rather interesting for me, who comes from a state where, in 1990, we were forging ahead on all fronts. We were pro-immigration because we desperately needed workers for our exploding economy in Queensland. We had the exact opposite attitude of the Labor Party, which is a rabid free-marketeering party, and the Liberal Party, which wants to outcompete them to be the most rabid free-marketeering party on earth. If there is some other country on earth participating in a free-market economy could you point it out to me? It most certainly is not Brazil. It most certainly is not China. It most certainly is not Russia. It most certainly is not America. Where is this free-market economy? Maybe it exists, somewhere, but I have not been told about it.

There is not a single person in this House who would not know that there are no free markets in these countries. They are out there to win. They see it as their duty and responsibility to create jobs and prosperity for their people. They are not sitting back, saying 'It's got nothing to do with me. It's the Liberals' fault that we're closing down the car industry,' or 'It's the Labor Party. It's their fault that the car industry is closing down.' No, they are out there ensuring that their car industries stays open, that their shipping industries—like we are talking about here today—stay open and provide jobs for their people. You come into this place and call yourself an Australian. It is like that sign we see everywhere: 'If you are a Christian, what did you do today to prove it?' If you are an Australian, what did you do today to prove it? Every single day that I have sat in this parliament it has seemed to me that we are doing everything humanly possible to prove that we are not Australians. Future generations will pass an extremely harsh judgement upon these people.

As for America with this $8 an hour, I know a lot of Americans and they do not know anyone who works for $8 an hour. There is no doubt that California is the biggest agricultural juggernaut on earth, with their great irrigation developments, moving water great distances. You must admire them as a race of people for what they have done in irrigating Southern California, which is one of the driest and hottest places on earth, and turning it into a food bowl for the planet. But there is no doubt that they have low wage levels for a lot of their workers. They have the highest number of beggars in the world—more than India, would you believe? America has more beggars on its streets than India has. At one stage, California had more people in jail than in primary school. That is a pretty healthy sort of society, isn't it?

People won't starve. They will find a way to get money. They will thieve, they will sell drugs, they will do whatever they have to do. If you think people are going to live on $15,000 a year, for a wife and three kids, they are not. They will find some way around it, and they will find the way around it in the way people have in places like California.

The government said we will get cheaper shipping costs. They said we would get cheaper milk when we deregulated the milk industry. The price to the farmer would go down through the floor; therefore, the price to the consumer would go down. I recommend people read my book because it has all the statistics in there. It is only $39. Actually, you cannot get it now because we have sold out, I am proud to say. It is pretty simple. When they deregulated the dairy industry they thought: deregulate the labour market and deregulate the farming market.

When they deregulated the farming market, and dairying, they were on 59c the day before deregulation and 42c the day after. There was a 30 per cent cut in their income. So 7,000 or 8,000 dairy farmers exited the industry, taking about 20,000 workers' jobs and contractors with them. A lot of them exited in the most tragic manner possible. Sadly, I speak with authority on the subject. Did it benefit the consumer? No. Within 18 months the price had gone up not down. Yes, it went down by 3c for two days. The farmer went down 12c but the price went down 3c. It was not three days, it was about six months. Just to make it look good, they pulled it down by 3c for about six months. Then it went up very significantly. Over the next few years it went up over 20 per cent. Was it in the consumer's benefit? No, it was not.

What a concept—that if you pay slave labour wage levels that somehow we will benefit in our international competitiveness. Les Thiess, the great man, was going around saying, 'I pay the highest wages in the world', and taking great pride in saying that. The much maligned Bjelke-Petersen was able to say, 'We have the highest wage structures in the world'. It was what they skited about, not what they explained was the problem. It was our aspiration as a state—for Queensland. It was the aspiration of our great captains of industry, and a person like Andrew Forrest would fall into that category now. But we now define it as the problem, and people in this place define it as the problem. If they can show me an example where lowering wages has benefited us in international trade, I would like to see it. (Time expired)

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