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

Hughenden's population when I was elected to parliament was 4,000 people and 3½ million sheep. Across the map of Queensland it said, 'The best natural grasslands in Australia.' Hughenden today has a population of 1,000, dwindling and vanishing. It has nearly a quarter of its area covered by prickly acacia tree in a rapid invasion and destruction of our natural soils, grasslands, and flora and fauna. Where we had the railways and some of the drivers and shearers earning $200,000 a year, now there are no railways and no shearers. The town is 1,000 people and, population-wise, dying.

We're going to put a dam there and pull a measly, tiny little 1/16 of the waters of the mighty Flinders River—a little tiny bit of it—and turn that town into 15,000 to 20,000 people, prosperous and rich, with 150 farmers owning their own irrigation farms, with drought gone forever, a place where those farmers will earn $500,000 each per year. There will be contractors in the town earning $500,000 a year, and they will have freedom and space. This will be a land of prosperity, freedom and space. This will be where every Australian wants to live instead of the destruction that's been wrought by successive ALP and Liberal governments.

They deregulated the wool industry and completely destroyed it. Three and a half million sheep went down to about 100,000 sheep. They destroyed the railways completely. There are no railways now at all except the railway line carrying minerals—and very few minerals at that. They were completely destroyed, again, by the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. That is what has happened to Hughenden, and we are telling you what is going to happen to Hughenden. We hope that, through Anthony Albanese, who has visited Hughenden twice, it will also be the home of the biggest wind farm in Australia. The Keir family, very famous in climate and construction, will be coming from Townsville to build the windmills, and Twiggy Forrest will be building the biggest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere at Hughenden as well. We thank Anthony Albanese for putting the money in to make it on the crossroads, north-south, east-west. His contribution really was the touchstone to get that highway built. It cuts 2,000 kilometres off the road from Cairns to Melbourne. (Time expired)