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

The member said she was speaking for young people; I'm speaking for the old people, obviously. I once walked with giants, incredible Australians who proudly and doggedly achieved many great things for our nation. They built roads and dams, created towns and cities and developed our education and healthcare systems. They weren't driven by ego or the ability to make statues of themselves. They were driven by the innate desire to make Australia a great and prosperous nation and for all Australians to benefit from that prosperity. Milton Dick is one of those people.

Like many old families in Queensland, his great-great-grandmother, a widow, arrived in Charters Towers in gold-rush times, around 1880. Only a year later, my forebears arrived from places still unknown. His great-grandmother's family, the Goughs, built the Excelsior Hotel and the theatre in Charters Towers, which was one of the major town centres in those days. Both those buildings are still standing today. At the time, the businesspeople in Charters Towers—remember, Charters Towers was bigger than Brisbane at this stage—and his family threw all their weight behind the fledgling labour movement. Remember they were rich businesspeople, and they threw their whole weight behind the labour movement, as did my own family.

It was a wonderful thing when the businesspeople stood up for miners and those injured and killed in mining accidents. Milton has carried on that tradition. There are many others. Milton may disagree, but he played a major part, maybe the major part, in the ALP holding onto office in Queensland from Joh Bjelke-Petersen's day until the government fell in 1990. Milton fought tenaciously for the workers. Mount Isa workers are living under the looming threat of closure of its copper smelter right at this very moment. Milton has fought this closure once before and won.

I pay him a very fine tribute for achieving what very few in this place will ever achieve. He is strong, determined, tenacious, intelligent and fair. With him, I again will walk with giants. I take very great pleasure in supporting Milton and his work into the future.

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