Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

There has been a profound change in the NAIF. We hope the minister, who I hope has been responsible for those changes, will continue on that positive course. To date in North Queensland we have got $50 million for the airport in Townsville, which I use maybe four times a week. I have seen absolutely no change in anything at the Townsville airport. There was a nice little golden handshake for a foreign corporation that owns the airport with no benefit to the users of the airport.

We have James Cook University technical innovation building, $100 million. Here we go. That's $150 million and no tangible benefit that we can perceive whatsoever. Bear with me for a moment, I am just going through them: $610 million for a foreign corporation where the Australian applicants were passed over. It was given to them and then they got a $610 million golden handshake. Charles Darwin University got $151 million really for a building. Universities are not operating as such because no-one can go to them on account of COVID. They are having a good holiday actually. The Darwin Port got $300 million. The Darwin Port was sold by Andrew Robb to the Chinese. Then he moved onto a million dollars a year the next year off the company that he sold the seaport to.

Let's have a look at this: $300 million for a Chinese port; $151 million for a university that's not working; $610 million for a foreign corporation, which passed over an Australian corporation that should have got the contract in north Queensland; $46 million for extensions to JCU in Townsville; $20 million for a football team; $150 million for Northern Territory Airports, which I understand is foreign owned; $50 million for Townsville Airport, from which I have seen no benefit whatsoever; and $100 million for the James Cook University Technology Innovation Complex. Not bad! That's $1.5 billion that has gone to create virtually no jobs.

I would hope Minister Pitt is listening in. You're doing a good job, my friend. But, prior to him getting the portfolio, the blokes there handed out $1. 5 billion to produce not a single job. And the vast bulk of it has gone to foreign corporations. Their handling of this has been absolutely disastrous. Peta Credlin said on television that, in the fifth year, we gave $1. 5 billion to this fund and not a single cent has been spent. So then they went out on a wild spending spree and blew $1.5 billion.

That's in the past. I cannot not fault them since the new minister has taken over. I think that, at long last, they're starting to perform the way they should have performed. But, unfortunately, they have burnt up a couple of thousand million dollars there to achieve hardly a single damn job and hardly a single development of value to the Australian people. I mean, closed universities and foreign ports are hardly advantages for the Australian people. The only one I'm intimately familiar with is the Townsville Airport, which I use; as I said, I can see no difference from where it was prior to the spending of the $50 million.

The NAIF has been very good on the issue of CopperString, and so have successive governments. I want to put on public record my praise for the Rudd government, for the Gillard government and for the 'Abbott-Credlin government'. Each of them gave, in today's money, over $400 million as a grant to this scheme. We compete on the world market with our silver, lead and zinc. We have the biggest zinc mine in the world. We built the biggest copper mine in the world. We have one of the six or seven biggest fertiliser plants in the world—all in the North West Minerals Province. We can't compete because we get our electricity at a price that makes us hopelessly uncompetitive. It's wonderful for this place to say, 'Oh, we will have a competitive market,' but it ain't any competitive market for the Pilbara that's earning you all of your money, it ain't any competitive market for the North West Minerals Province that's earning you all of your money and it ain't any competitive market for Olympic Dam. Coal, yes. But the other three? Nothing. So the Rudd government immediately announced that they were connecting those three areas to the national grid so we would get competitively priced power.

Now, our problem in the North West Minerals Province—and I ask the minister to please listen to this—is that we have one tiny little power station, hopelessly non-competitive, that has no economies of scale; it's too small. Also, it is on gas, and the governments of Australia—state mostly, in this case, and federal—gave our gas away for 6c a unit. We currently buy it for $16.60 a unit. Our competitors are buying it for $6, and we've got to buy it for $16.60, and unfortunately for us, we need the gas as well as the gas electricity, so we get doubly hit. So, we get hit (a) because of the tiny little power station, (b) because it's on gas and (c) because there's a monopoly, and it would very stupid if they didn't take advantage of their monopoly situation in the marketplace.

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Glencore and the fertiliser plant will benefit to the tune of $50 million a year if that power line goes in. There is also no doubt in my mind that if it doesn't go in there'll be a complete collapse in the economy of the North West Minerals Province. It's not pie in the sky, or garbage. Glencore announced 2½ years ago the closure of the copper refinery in Townsville and the copper smelter in Mount Isa, and of course the fertiliser plant has no sulphur coming from the copper operations, so it closed as well.

That was announced. Massive concessions have been provided by the state government. I don't want to be cynical, but they were provided just before the state elections—which happened to be when the closures were going to occur. So, we were very, very lucky; we got let off the hook! But we're only off the hook for a little while, unless we can get that. And Minister, if your government is wanting to do something, Eva is a mine that will produce 160,000 tonnes of copper ore a year, which makes everything out there viable and will put about $1 billion a year into the Australian economy. In my opinion, it will not go ahead unless it has competitively priced power. Either you want it or you don't want it.

I can sit here and give you 20 other Eva examples. But we need Eva to keep the copper refinery in Townsville going, to keep the copper smelter in Mount Isa going, to keep the copper mines in Cloncurry and Mount Isa going and to keep the fertiliser plant, which brings in $2,000 million a year by itself, going. That is what is needed to keep them going. We've had a very positive response. I thank the minister, because there's been a very positive response from NAIF on this. But there will have to be more money. Also, after all this wastage, Minister, you haven't got a lot of money left in the piggy bank, and that money has to be replenished. It is the one fund that can deliver.

I have great faith in the new minister. I have had great faith in the new board, and the directions it's taking. I've read out to you the disasters that have occurred—in five years, not a dollar went out on anything, and then, among the projects that did get money, there wasn't a single job; half of them were for foreign corporations and the other half were for universities that were closed. The only one I'm really familiar with is Townsville Airport. Well, I can absolutely assure you that you could take the 10,000 people who use that airport regularly and they could tell you there has been no change in anything at that airport. So, what they did with the $50 million, who knows? And really, who cares at this stage?

I conclude my remarks by saying that we have had a whole new world, with a new regime under a new minister, and a new board. Already they're doing exciting things, but a lot more money will have to be put into the till if this is to play a meaningful part in the development of Australia.

Before I sit down, for the economy of Australia there is $3,000 million a year out there waiting in the Hells Gate proposal. It is superclean energy. It actually lowers the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Previous speakers have gone on and on about the world coming to an end over CO2, and to some degree I agree with them in a minor way. This project will deliver seven per cent of Australia's petrol, 1½ per cent of Australia's electricity and 10 per cent of Australia's ox production, pig production or chook production through the feedlots and it will lower the existing CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 is not an emission and is not a by-product; it is a product. We want to produce as much CO2 as is humanly possible because it feeds algae. The CO2 comes from the algae and the CO2 goes into the algae, so we're putting CO2 into algae.

There's $3 billion for the Australian economy in that one project. If the transmission line goes through, you can add another $2 million to the Australian economy. If you build a rail line and a multi-user facility in the Galilee, there will be $20 billion coming in. If you give money to silicon development, there will be another $5 billion coming in from the super-rich silica deposits in Cape York—not at Cape Flattery or at Hope Vale but much further north. If you build a canal to enable us to get our fertiliser product out, we will give you the biggest fertiliser plant in the world, bringing in $6 billion a year and $2 billion in prawn production.

Minister, this is what we can give you, but we need that NAIF, so please take your gun down, put it at the head of the Treasurer and get that money.

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