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

I have very great respect for the Deputy Prime Minister but I do not think that he did himself a great deal of good today. He would be well aware, or at least he should be well aware, of the pain and agony that agriculture—the dairy industry and the cattle industry—has gone through in Australia. It is said that we do not need an inquiry. I said previously in the week but I think I should say it again: rather than a parliament only two people that I know of have actually called for a royal commission, and they are Bill Gunn and me with the Fitzgerald inquiry in Queensland. We had a terrible problem with police corruption in Queensland. We had had inquiry after inquiry. This government is now saying, 'We'll have an inquiry into banking.' We had inquiry after inquiry in Queensland, and you say that the government should have done something about it. Well, you try doing something about police corruption when it sets in. I can tell you it is a lot of fun! Once you had a royal commission there was the spotlight of public opinion. We could not find out who was at the heart of that corruption but that royal commission did find out who was at the heart of it. We were able to remove that person, which we as a government could not do.

I share the government's fear about where a royal commission might go. As Menzies said, you never have an inquiry unless you know what the answer is going to be. So I share their fears, and they are quite realistic fears. You only have to look at what happened to us in Queensland. In our efforts to get at the police, we were torn apart. So the government is quite right in being worried about that. I ask every person on that side of the House who has said there should be no inquiry into banking whether they are serious. I felt so sorry for the member for Dawson. There would not be a person in his electorate who would agree with that proposition—not a single person in his electorate would agree with that proposition—and nor would most of the other electorates in Australia.

I represent the agricultural industry and particularly the cattle industry. This is what the banks did for us: we received $750 million. We thanked Treasurer Swan and Treasurer Hockey for that money but the banks organised it so that we could not get a reconstruction board because they would lose a lot of business to the reconstruction board. I speak with authority because I was effectively head of the reconstruction board in Queensland. Their antagonism towards us was enormous. They put another banking institution out there, and so we had no banking institution. Something like two-thirds of the dairy farmers in Australia have gone. There is a farmer doing away with himself every four days in this country and no-one seems to think that there is any problem. I would say that one in 10 of those problems comes from deficiencies in the banking system.

Let me just zero in on a case. This was a case that Treasurer Swan thought was so important that he ordered the head of ASIC to meet with me twice. This was a problem that Treasurer Hockey thought was so important that he ordered ASIC to meet with me once. There was a $200 million sugar mill owned by the farmers. It was sold out from under them for $2 million. Has anyone gone to jail? Was there any inquiry? Did ASIC do anything? In Innisfail, where this occurred, they refer to ASIC not as a watchdog but as a lapdog. Of course there are the figures—anyone can find out. The mill was valued the year before, and there was an offer for $56 million. The year after, the mill was sold by the company for $76 million—but they had bought it for $2 million!

The banks are going well. They have loaned money for housing to a point where the housing values in the Greater Sydney area are near enough to $1 million. The average income for an Australian is $75,000, and most Australians are well below that. Take out the tax and you are at about $56,000. If you are paying $970,000 for a house, there is your $56,000 gone. And then you tell me there is no necessity for an inquiry?

You are standing on the brink of a precipice, and every intelligent person in this country knows that you are standing on the brink of a precipice. Maybe you don't want the spotlight, because it might indicate that the precipice is there. I can assure everyone in this House that the government—I don't mean to be offensive to the ALP, but I would agree with people on the other side that I wouldn't be convinced that they would have done anything, because they were there for three years. I am not making a partisan plea. I am simply saying to you that I, like the rest of Australia, would not have faith in this place being able to address the problems of the banking industry. I would have faith in a royal commission because I have seen it at work and I have seen its enormous effectiveness in achieving the goals it was after.

Let me give you one other example. There was a now very famous case of a bloke called Charlie Phillott. The state member for Mount Isa—Robbie Katter, my son—called a big meeting. God bless the Deputy Prime Minister for going to that meeting. It was a last stand meeting at Winton. A bloke called David Pascoe wrote a letter about a bloke called Charlie Phillott. He wrote, 'A letter to my fellow Australians,' and he concentrated on Charlie Phillott. If you want to see everything that is good about this country, meet Charlie Phillott, because he represents everything that is good about this country. My staff sat in front of the screen, reading the letter, and they were all crying. My wife sat in front of the screen and burst out crying. She formed a body to send out food and help to some of these people.

The spotlight was turned on this issue. Phillott had walked off. He owned nothing. The farm had fallen to pieces. But when the spotlight of public attention was put on the bank, the chairman himself, God bless him—I think he is a good man—said, 'What's going on here?' Charlie Phillott had his $2 million station returned to him. The debt of $2 million was written off and $750,000 to put the station back in order. 60 Minutes ran two segments on it. That is the power of the spotlight. You give us no spotlight and we have got no power, right? If there is one thing I would agree strongly with the LNP about, it is that the ALP failed to do it. The LNP has failed to do it. Believe me, in Queensland we failed to weed out police corruption. Did the royal commission weed it out? Yes, it did.

What I am saying is that we want the spotlight and the power of public opinion which was so enormously effective in the now famous case of Charlie Phillott. By the way, that letter got 3½ million hits. It was the highest ever recorded in Australian history for a letter on the internet. It pointed out the shortcomings of the banks. The spotlight is in itself a redress.

We have had an inquiry into Woolworths and Coles. You ought to read it. It said, 'They are going to take over Australia. They've got 60 per cent of the market. They're increasing at 2½ per cent a year. You'd better do something about it.' Did the government—successive governments—do anything about it? No. They now have nearly 90 per cent of the Australian food market. We had a dairy inquiry called by Mr Costello. I am not knocking him. I thank him for calling on the inquiry. It was another whitewash: 'There's nothing wrong with the dairy industry,'—nothing except that 7,000 of the 15,000 dairy farmers have gone broke, bankrupt, and walked off their properties worth absolutely nothing. There is nothing wrong apart from that. If you think you can achieve these objectives with all of the muscle power that we were able to bring on the cattle industry and secured $800 million in loans—do you know how many cattlemen got assistance from the government in Queensland? Four—one, two, three, four. The minister was advised that there were only 13 cattlemen at risk. Well, four stations had been foreclosed on in the Caulfield area. The famous Charlie Phillott said 12 had been foreclosed on in the Winton area. The Catholic priest in Longreach said one quarter of the stations there were being foreclosed on. And you say, 'What's banking got to do with this?'

If we had a reconstruction board, no-one would have been foreclosed on. And I speak with authority because in Queensland we did have a reconstruction authority. I happened to be the minister with primary, but not ultimate, responsibility. And we went in and we were told— (Time expired)

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