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

I rise to ask the House to take note of the death of Sir Leo Hielscher and the Queensland economic miracle. Queensland was a Cinderella state. It had virtually no coalmining, very little mineral mining, very few cattle. It had nothing. And then Joh Bjelke-Petersen was elected premier, with Leo Hielscher put in charge of Queensland, and they took Australia from being a coal-importing country to Queensland becoming the biggest coal-exporting state on Earth.

They took huge risks, putting thousands of millions of dollars into building railway lines and coal ports and opening up mines and towns. This man had the courage to do that, along with the then premier of Queensland, Bjelke-Petersen. I don't think anyone that was here at the time would deny that you could not separate the pair of them as to who was more or less responsible. Each has said it was the other bloke, so I don't know! Queensland went from being a coal-importing state in a coal-importing nation to being the biggest coal-exporting state on Earth. One of the biggest copper-producing states on Earth. One of the biggest aluminium-producing states on Earth. Its agricultural production quadrupled.

These were people who believed every day of their lives that they had to strain nerve, muscle and sinew to provide work and happiness and a wonderful life for people. That's how they were driven, not to save the planet or for some other ideological pursuit—which future generations will laugh at on a grand scale. No; these people were serious people. And Sir Leo Hielscher, quite rightly, has two of the six biggest bridges in Australia named for him. Public servants, normally, are bad. They do terrible things, they stop anything from happening and they make our lives miserable. There are very rare exceptions; Leo Hielscher was one of them.

Here's just one little story before I close. They went in and said, 'We want to export bauxite from Queensland.' And Leo nearly died laughing. Exporting bauxite? 'We export aluminium, not bauxite!' And they said, 'Oh yes—cheap electricity.' We are building the biggest power station in the world and we're taking the coal for free. I mean, we're desperate for a reserve resource policy on gas. We took the coal for free! The biggest power station in the world, Gladstone, was fuelled on free coal. We had the cheapest electricity in the world, and hence we got one of the biggest aluminium industries in the world.

These were great men. These were truly great men. And they believed in freedom. If you went in there with some restrictions and petty little rules and regulations, you would have been laughed out of their offices. (Time expired)

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