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

Vale, Greg Vuleta, a great Australian and to me a close mate. Greg is one of the three amigos that ran Innisfail. Nobody made a move in Innisfail without first speaking to John Moyle, Bruce Gillan and Greg Vuleta, three very close friends. They were big-timers. Every year, they worked as labourers at the Innisfail show—these three really big-time blokes doing menial clean-up jobs at the show. Playing another prominent role, Greg was an extremely good actor, invariably the lead in shows at the local theatre, popularly run by Alison Moyle, the mother of Innisfail. Theatre was very big in Innisfail. Two hundred people seemed to pack out every theatre session.

Greg reached superstar status when the National Party leader and ag minister Warren Truss issued an import permit for bananas from a country where people work for $5 a day. Our wages then were $18 an hour. As the voice of North Queensland on drivetime 4KZ, he became the loud voice of opposition to Warren Truss's decision. He whipped up a rage, did a magnificent job and then led 3,000 marchers in a giant protest rally in Cairns. He was working on the megaphone, and he was so committed to his task that he hadn't realised what was happening to himself. He collapsed with heat stroke and was rushed to hospital. He was lucky to have survived the heat stroke, but he was a man so passionately committed to the people of Far North Queensland and his people and his homeland that he fought the fight. And I might add that we won and Warren Truss didn't.

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