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

In Queensland every year for 20 years, we've built a giant developmental agricultural dam. Every year for 20 years, we have put down over 600, arguably 700, kilometres of railway line to develop the mining wealth of Queensland. Every year for 20 years we have built a giant resort, a billion-dollar tourist resort. In the 33 years since the fall of the old Country Party government, there's not been a dam built, not been a single inch of railway line put down and not a single tourist resort been built. 'Red Ted', easily the most important person in Australian history—I didn't say that; Paul Keating said that; I didn't say that; Malcolm Fraser said that—said, 'The job of government is to provide real work for our people', not make believe government jobs paid for by robbing Peter over here to pay Paul over there but real wealth-creating jobs.' That's what he wrote to Chifley halfway through the Depression. It is the job of government. When I say 'government', I include the media and the banks.

Just have a look at what you can create. You build a dam at Hughenden and 150 people get a farm to live on that will give them an income of nearly half a million dollars a year. It's so easy. All you've got to do is build a dam. Now, this is on a river that isn't a river—it's only a river for about a month of the year if you're lucky. It's just a flood plain, that's all. We just keep a little bit of that flood. The great Ernie Bridge, the first First Australian to become a cabinet minister in Australian history and the Watering Australia Foundation president—Slim Dusty, I and others were on that board—said, 'All we are asking for is that the great rivers of Australia, on their brief rampage to the sea, pay a small tribute to those people who live upon its banks.' What a beautiful statement.

The great Dr Bradfield, the greatest builder in Australian history—I won't go into everything that he built—said, 'By filling Lake Eyre with water, we can turn inland Australia into Ghirraween.' It's a First Australian word which means 'the land of flowers'. There is no doubt in my mind that if you fill Webb Lake with water, there will be a very significant rainfall in the driest part of Australia. I represent a place where it never stops raining. It's Paradise Coast, between Townsville and Cairns. It's a 100-inch rainfall area. It never stops raining. All Dr Bradfield said was to take a little tiny bit of that water and send it out to supplement the giant Flinders River. That's all. That's all he was saying.

Where there is a barren wilderness, there's not a single kangaroo in a thousand kilometres by a thousand kilometres: the mid-west plains are as flat as a billiard ball table, and, of course, there's no surface water, so no kangaroos. There's nothing there at the present moment except prickly trees, an introduced species, which is a B of a thing, and the Julia Creek dunnart. It's doomed to oblivion, because if the prickly trees don't get it then the pigs will, and the government is doing nothing about either of them. We have a wilderness which is running to rack and ruin and eroding away into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and we can make it Ghirraween—a land of flowers—with a little bit of money to build a dam, a tunnel and a fairly long canal. Just push up some ground, and the water flows out onto this western plain, which has the richest soils in the world—the vertosol soils of inland Queensland. They're not my comments; they're comments by professional— (Time expired)

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