Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I spoke to the member of parliament for the state's northern seat of Western Australia and asked her how much of her electorate, which is the top half of Western Australia, is owned by foreigners, and she said, 'Almost all of it.' I said, 'I'm not looking for a pejorative comment; I'm looking for a real assessment', and she said, 'I'm giving you a real assessment; I don't tell lies.' What precipitated my interest was that I had heard that Yakamunda and five stations related to it—Yakamunda was the biggest station property in Australia—have been sold to the Chinese and that Chinese credit bought a number of stations quite separately from that. And of course a number of the Kidman properties are also in Western Australia. It was the considered opinion of that state member of parliament that almost all of her electorate was foreign owned.

Now we're not allowed to use the Fitzroy water. There is only the Daly and the north-western quadrant of Australia. There is the Daly in the Northern Territory; there is the Victoria, which is so small you couldn't worry about it; and there are the Ord and the Fitzroy. It has been decided that we'll not use any more water from the Daly, which is hardly using any water. The Fitzroy won't be used, so that only leaves the Ord. The Ord stage 2 and 3 were given by this government to a Chinese corporation. The port of Darwin was sold to Chinese as well. A significant portion of stage 1 of the Ord is also owned by Chinese.

That is a quarter of Australia's land mass. They own all the water that's available, they own all the land and they own the port. Well, what do we Australians own? Future generations will call the people in this place—not the people on the cross benches, because we have tenaciously, unitedly fought the fight—but the people on that side and that side are the people that have sold this country out and sold it off. That is not a pejorative statement. That is a statement of reality. We don't need a lot of perspicacity to figure out why the port was sold, because the person in the ministry responsible for selling the port—as has been publicly announced, and he has not denied it—is on $880,000 a year. Well, if he's getting $200,000 or $300,000 as a retired minister from this place in superannuation, he most certainly retires handsomely, doesn't he?

Who are the supine people in Cabinet that agreed to this? Who are the backbench that did not raise it in the party room the next week? Are we people on the cross benches the only people that oppose the sell-off of our nation? On numerous occasions I have said that if the sale of an asset brings to us markets that we don't have, if it brings technology that we don't have, and if it brings capital that we don't have, then there may be some case for it. I emphasise 'maybe'. We made a number of those decisions in the Queensland parliament when I was there. But when our government fell in 1990, the water was not owned by foreigners, the land was not owned by foreigners and our economy was not owned by foreigners.

I used to say that I only have to keep two groups of people happy. That's two or three people in Brisbane and two or three people in my electorate. So long as I went along, to quote Bill Hayden, to 10,000 fetes worse than death, and made my press releases and noises, I would be the member for Kennedy for forever. Now, thank goodness, the Australian people are waking up to themselves and not voting along party lines any more. I remind the people on both sides of this House, you're on 30 per cent, they're on 30 per cent and we're on 30 per cent. When we start working a little bit more closely together, as I think we need to, on the cross benches, then your day of selling your nation off and out is over.

Having said those things, just how damaging is it to the Australian economy? Well, there was a decision made that we won't make cars in Australia anymore. That's not a decision by Toyota. That is a decision by respective Australian governments. All they had to do was say that every car bought under a government contract would be Australian made. That's all they had to do, and we would still have a car industry. But that would cost us about $15 billion a year, particularly in Queensland, where almost all the coal seam gas is. There's $23 billion a year in export earnings coming into this country from coal seam gas, and it just boomerangs back out again, because it's all foreign owned and there's hardly any local content in coal seam gas. You dig a hole in the ground, put a pipe in it and join it to some other pipes that go to the coast. There's no work there at all. It's not like coal or iron ore where you're employing hundreds of thousands of people to dig it out of the ground. So we just gave away $23 billion a year. Well, there's $40 billion a year we've given away. And then there's the little issue of ethanol.

My honourable friend here—my very honourable friend, whom I have very great admiration for—the member who comes from Hobart, Tasmania, and who is one of my Independent, small-party colleagues in this place, said: 'Why have we not got ethanol? We are the only country on earth that does not have clean fuel. We have dirty, filthy fuel that kills people. Why are we the only country on earth that doesn't have it?' I said: 'That's a pretty easy question to answer. The first person to make that decision was John Anderson, who was the Leader of the National Party in this place. He made that decision. According to newspaper reports, he is now on the board of one or two coal, oil and gas companies. The second one was Mark Vaile, who, again, according to media reports, is on the board of a number of oil, coal and gas companies. The third one was Mr Ferguson from the Labor side. He is purportedly on three oil, gas and coal seam gas company boards. And Mr Macfarlane, the last one to make the decision, is working for the oil, gas and minerals council of Queensland. Then you ask me: why were these decisions made? If they're getting all these handouts and promises, or whatever you want to call them, if they're getting all of these things, then surely they gave some small contribution to their political parties. Surely, the only reasonable and decent thing would be that their political parties should get some money out of this.

If we have an inquiry into coal seam gas, some pretty ugly stuff is going to come out, because there are people involved who are public servants on $80,000 or $90,000 a year who suddenly have assets worth $20 million a year when they're in pivotal positions with respect to the coal seam gas industry in Queensland. I'm sure that people on both sides of this House would die in the ditches to have that locked up forever. They won't want to have a close look at that.

So, if you add together the countries that have ethanol, there is China, Europe, America, almost all the South American countries—Brazil leading the way—the Philippines, parts of Indonesia and India. Who on earth hasn't got ethanol? Australia. We don't need any petrol. It only sent the Japanese to war, and the European war was about Hitler trying to get to the oilfields through Stalingrad—the gateway to the oilfields. If you add ethanol, $10 billion, and coal seam gas, $20 billion, that's $30 billion. If you add that to the money coming in from agriculture, which no longer belongs to Australia—the third element of the equation—you have $50 billion a year that this country should be getting. But because these people wanted it for their donations, for their political parties, and their own private pockets— (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.