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

I would like to table this document, but I'm told that I can't. I don't know why. That's quite extraordinary. The document is about the great Queensland dividing range scheme, which just revises the Bradfield Scheme. I represent an area where it rains all the time—above 100 inches of rainfall for most of the towns on the coast—and we just want a teeny-weeny little bit of that water to move it out onto the western plains onto an area called the Desert Uplands.

I greatly respect my crossbench colleagues and their concern for the environment, and I share that concern, but we have a treeless desert at the present moment that we're going to convert into a farming and agriculture but mostly industrial undertaking that will prevent 20 million tonnes of Australian carbon dioxide a year from going up into the atmosphere. That's close to five per cent of Australia's emissions. Why wouldn't you do this? Is there a single reason on the planet why you wouldn't do this? Part of the area that would be benefitting has 23,000 square kilometres of prickly acacia tree that absorbs no CO2—I'm not going to go into the reasons why—that has wiped out all native flora and fauna. Surely it would be better to grow something that will take CO2.

I haven't got time to table another document here, the Hells Gates document, but in that you will see a farmer standing on dirt ground. That's at the start of the year. At the end of the year, there's nearly 13 foot of solid sugarcane biomass. You can imagine how much CO2 every hectare of sugarcane takes out of the atmosphere. I would be the first to question any program that jeopardises the environment. We've been fighting against Chalumbin wind farms. Queensland has felled more trees than any other state in Australia by the length of the Flemington straight, and I can tell you that a whole lot of those trees—I fly over them, and I never thought about it until Chalumbin came up.

I was at a meeting. They were all sort of greenies at the meeting. They said, 'This is a really weird meeting,' when I came in. The chairman, the professor, said that, in summary, what is happening in Chalumbin—and the Spectator magazine says it's going to be the Franklin Dam of this decade—is that a beautiful nature wonderland is going to be turned into industrial wasteland. Good call. Queensland can be proud that they have felled more trees than any other state in Australia. I might add, as far as coalmining—I'm all for coalmining. I'm the strongest pro-coalmining person in any parliament in Australia. I share my colleagues' view and I congratulate the Queensland government on opening more coalmines than any other government since Bjelke-Petersen. Look at the length of the hypocrisy in this place.

If you introduce ethanol, why are we one of the only two countries on earth—by heavens, if you pull out a 20c coin and have a look at it, it's got an English monarch on it. When is this country going to grow up? I am sorry, but we're not English anymore; we are Australian. We do not believe in aristocracy. We believe that every man is born free and equal. That's what we believe. So what I'm saying here is we've got to grow up and we've got to be intelligent and we have got to reduce. Why are we the only country on earth that hasn't got ethanol? Iemma, the ALP Premier of New South Wales, said, 'I can't go another day with people dying in Sydney who simply should not be dying.' So he introduced ethanol. No-one after him has been worried about 900 people dying every year in Sydney from smog from motor vehicle emissions. No-one else is worried about it. This place doesn't seem worried about it.

The ALP have been there, the LNP have been there and not one of them introduced ethanol. Yet every other country on earth has done it. Look at the map. Go and check it out. The EU agreement says everyone has to use five per cent. China is using five per cent. Half of Indonesia is using five per cent. India is going to five per cent. America is on 15 per cent. But let's use Brazil because this is the country most like Australia— (Time expired)

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