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

I must draw the attention of the House to the fact that the crossbenchers are in charge. I am greatly honoured to serve with such handsome, extremely intelligent people. They have excellent intellects, and they actually use their intellects as well. I pay that tribute to the honourable leader of the House this evening.

Moving on, Queensland is an interesting state because we have a million people ruled by a government 2,000 kilometres away. Now, I'm not aware of anywhere on earth where people are ruled by a government 2,000 kilometres away. Some of us are 3,000 kilometres away. This illustrates the complete failure of democracy to take into account distance—which is taken into account in every other country on earth, by the way, except Australia, including Canada—with Nunatsiavut, the Eskimos get a special member of parliament—and in the Orkney Isles in Britain.

Brisbane has a population of 1.2 million, and North Queensland is near enough to one million in population. So the population of Brisbane and North Queensland are the same. I'm saying Brisbane—not the Sunshine Coast or the Gold Coast but Brisbane. Brisbane has 36 kilometres of tunnels; we have none at all. During this recent cyclone, Cairns was completely cut off—300,000 people were completely cut off. You couldn't get in by sea; the sea was too rough. You couldn't get in by helicopter or aeroplane because of the cyclonic winds. All three roads were hopelessly cut. The member Shane Knuth and I climbed down one of the holes in the main exit highway, and the hole was 20 foot deep. So we were trapped. Brisbane gets 36 kilometres of tunnels; we get none. What is going on here? The Liberals found a thousand million dollars for a pleasure dome for themselves in Brisbane, whilst people were dying.

From 2001 to 2017 the Kuranda Range Road, the main highway connecting the inland with Cairns—the Kuranda billy goat track, as it's called—had seven-hour closures 44 times a year over the last 16 years, if you like. It's not the last 16 years, because they've stopped giving out the figures. I can't blame them! Those seven-hour stoppages occurred 44 times a year. There has been 867 incidents, with 556 people hospitalised and 45 deaths, and still nothing is done about it. Yet they can find $36 billion for tunnels in Brisbane, but when we need a kilometre and a half—about a thousand million dollars—we get nothing at all. That is the situation, until we the KAP get the balance of power. Then we'll see what happens. That will happen real quick.

The Bridle Track tunnel will cut the time from the Atherton Tablelands, where there are 60,000 people. It will cut the time from Mareeba to the Cairns CBD from an hour and 20 minutes down to 26 minutes. Infinitely more important, actually, is the fact of the deaths. Almost as important is the fact that the great mineral province of Far North Queensland, the Chillagoe mineral province, cannot be opened up because we can't get the product out. It was bigger than the North West Minerals Province, which now produces $8,000 million a year of export earnings for Australia, but we can't get our product out because our port is cut off. We can't get to it. You can't get to it in a truck.

What we're saying is the Bridle Track tunnel was originally drafted by the pioneers. Martin Tenni's grandfather was a state member and minister who was determined to get this tunnel built, but he left parliament, unfortunately, before he got it built. It still needs to be done. In its infinite wisdom, the state government spent $2,000 million on the highway between Gordonvale and Cairns. I don't know what we achieved, really. Yes, it's a better and safer road, but a tunnel is needed. (Time expired)

See this speech in context