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

When we talk about catastrophes, there's a terrible story concerning a family. Like my own family, they were original settlers in north-west Queensland. A TV crew from the ABC had come out with me to visit this person. His entire property had been burnt out and he was loading a 243 rifle—bolt action. The interviewer said, 'What's the situation?' He said: 'Well, you know what happened to my father and the two stockmen.' The interviewer said, 'Yes, I know that story.' One of the stockmen got tangled up in the barbed wire fence, and his father and the other stockman went back to rescue him. The fire rolled over all three and incinerated them to death. Anyway, this was the son of that father, and he was loading his rifle. The interviewer said, 'So what are you doing now?' He said: 'Well, I've lost all my sheep. I'm gone. The banks have sold me up. I'll walk off this property penniless.' The journalist said, 'So what are you doing now?' He rubbed his eyes and said, 'I've just got to shoot some more sheep.' As the sun went down—bang, bang.

That is what it's like to live in the mid-west of North Queensland, and I think Victoria, with your fires, probably appreciates our situation. But we also have terrible floods, and we're in the midst of one now.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 18:05 to 18:25

I was telling the story of a man at Julia Creek, watching four generations of contribution by his family vanishing in front of him, which was somewhat better than his father being incinerated to death along with his brother and one of the stockmen on the station. Having said that, we've just had yet another flood, and a very prominent, wonderful young family, with four or five kids, just watched 3,000 head of cattle worth about $6 million flow out to the Gulf of Carpentaria. I don't know whether they're going to be able to recover from that, and they weren't Robinson Crusoe.

We keep saying: 'Oh, this is terrible. The government must give us some money because we've had this terrible thing happen to us.' It is dead right that we really do need the government to come in, but what would be infinitely better? I can't talk about fires in Victoria, but I can talk about floods in the mid-west of North Queensland, my homeland. My family went out there in the 1890s in a Cobb and Co stagecoach, so I can speak with authority about there. With a few well placed dams and a few other ameliorative measures, we just won't have to suffer this. Why haven't you built a dam in Australia in 30 years?

I represent half of every drop of rainfall that falls on Australia, and I will have the invidious fate of having to leave politics—even if it's in six years time or ten years time—without having seen a single gully with a block of concrete across it. You could say, 'Well, you're a pretty incompetent beggar.' You could say that, except that I was told by my tribal leadership in the mid-west of North Queensland that I had to get the Bradfield Scheme. I had to find out what it was. It took me about two months to find out what it was. Well, I got it! The federal government announced the building of the Bradfield Scheme. It's sort of like the Snowy Mountains Scheme, only bigger and much more effective. The Clarence River diversion would double the original project on the Murray-Darling. It'll double that production. Similarly, the Bradfield Scheme will double that production again.

It diverts a little tiny bit of the waters where it rains all the time. In the heart of my electorate, we're getting 100 inches of rainfall. A little tiny bit of that water is sent out to where I come from, the mid-west plains, where there is beautiful, rich, flat, rolling black soil. Now when we die and we go up to meet Jesus, he's going to say: 'What did you do with this wonderful asset I gave you? You're growing prickly trees on it—

See this speech in context