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

In the election campaign, we were very appreciative of the Prime Minister saying that there would be no power stations closing and there would be no coalmines closing. It's alright for everybody here, who have nice warm jobs and their $250,000 a year, but not for those people that have climbed off horses or left cane fields to work in the mines because they've got no money.

There are some 200,000 jobs in coalmining in Australia, and I sure would like some of our so-called trade union leaders to stand up here, because it seems to me that I'm one of the very few that's standing up. You want to go and destroy, cold-bloodedly, the jobs of 200,000 people. I have a case before me at the present moment—a terrible shooting up in my electorate. The tensions that arise in a family who has no income are brought out graphically by this case. People have got to have a decent living.

China is buying the coal, and India is buying the coal. If you think a tiny little European country that's not as big as most of their cities is going to tell them that they can't have cheap electricity, you believe in the tooth fairy. In India they have no ability to put in solar—and I'm not going to give the reasons why; I think everyone should know that. They get very little hydro, and what they have they've already developed. In China they're laughing at us. They're producing the solar panels and sending them to Australia whilst they're building 200 coal-fired power stations.

People will look back on this era and say the same as me. When I went to university, everyone was running around with Mao Zedong's 'Little Red Book'. I suppose I've got to be fair and say that if they asked me about him, I would say, 'He's a nationalist. I thought he was alright. Well, he murdered 48 million people. We get carried away on some idealistic journey. In the bush there's a saying: 'When your neighbour starts preaching religion, reach for your branding iron. When your neighbour starts preaching morality, reach for your shooting iron.' This is a case where I'd be reaching for my shooting iron! If anything is ideologically driven, is not coming from reality and is not coming from the pain of the people and the needs of the people, there is something badly wrong—and 'badly wrong' means that people hate politicians. I have never in my life seen this level of hatred towards politicians. When I was young, the attitude towards politicians was 'Geez, this is really important.' Now, mostly, they don't even want to meet you. So keep going the way you're going, but 200,000 Australians depend on this industry. Just remember that you're sacking them and there's nowhere else to go because we've got no industry left in this country and there's not one single thing being done by this government or the last government to create industry in this country—nothing. There's nothing on the scoreboard.

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