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representatives vote 2019-07-22#9
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2019-09-06 15:39:55
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Title
Bills — Future Drought Fund Bill 2019; Second Reading- Future Drought Fund Bill 2019 - Second Reading - Adjourn debate
Description
<p class="speaker">Tony Smith</p><p>The original question was that this bill be read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Hunter has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words, so the question now is that the amendment be agreed to. I call the member for Kennedy in continuation.</p> <p class="speaker">Bob Katter</p>- The majority voted against a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2019-07-22.130.1) to adjourn debate, which means the debate can continue.
<p>I want to thank the opposition for their attempt to give me 15 minutes tomorrow, and I thank the government for giving me 12 minutes tonight. I remain confused. I can tell you the previous speaker from Victoria—the dairying state—did not know that it was his state that instituted milk marketing and it worked there for nearly 100 years. That's an exaggeration; it was about 70 years. Mr Kennett, the Premier of Victoria, deregulated the milk market into Melbourne, so that all they could get in Victoria was the world price for milk. Did people get cheaper milk in Melbourne? No, of course they didn't. Woolworths and Coles sold it at almost the same price, so they achieved absolutely nothing in terms of consumer benefit, but what happened to the farmers? They went down on their knees. But because they were getting around 40c and New South Wales and Queensland were getting 60c, they said, 'Righto, we want this whole minimum price scheme abolished so we can go across the border and get 60c.' They went across the border and they didn't even get 40c because they were in a deregulated marketplace. And a deregulated marketplace where there are only two buyers—effectively, the two supermarket giants—is what I was taught at university is an oligopoly or a duopoly. It's very, very bad indeed for the sellers, and, of course, it's not very good for the people they sell to either.</p><p>So we had Mr McEwen, the founder of the Country Party, establishing the milk marketing scheme for Australia and here is his so-called follower standing in this place and saying, 'It'll never work,' after it worked for 70 years. The only reason it stopped working was that Mr Kennett deregulated the milk market into Melbourne, and it's extraordinary to me that a person out of Victoria would not know this. Then they wanted to come across the border. Of course, having had their own industry destroyed, they wanted to destroy ours. They had the numbers and they voted for deregulation. The rest of us and my area were on 59c the day before deregulation and we were on 41c the day after. We had around 230 or 240 dairy farmers before the deregulation was announced. After the deregulation, within about 10 years, we had 39 farmers. I'll repeat that slowly. We had 240 farmers all making a good living. After deregulation, we had 39 farmers. And a lot of those people exited the industry in the most tragic way possible, of course.</p><p>Now, who is to blame for this? Is it the dairy farmers? Have they done anything wrong? Is it the people that were buying the milk—have they done anything wrong? Is it Woolworths and Coles who were trying to maximise profits for their shareholders? No, they've done nothing wrong. So, who's got it wrong? The government of Australia, the government of Victoria and the government of Queensland—they've got it wrong. They were the ones that did it.</p><p>The only bad guys in this are the Liberal Party, the Labor Party and, to their eternal shame, the National Party. Jack McEwen would turn in his grave. Doug Anthony, whose daddy did exactly the same with the bananas, would turn in his grave if he thought the party that they created and established was now the party of deregulation, smashing to pieces the great edifices that were built.</p><p>I was in a state of shock when the Labor Party moved from the price scheme because they'd been anything but innocent in this deregulation. Whilst Mr McEwen was the father of statutory marketing, Mr Keating was the father of the destruction of statutory marketing and the destruction of agriculture in this nation.</p><p>We're here to talk about drought, and there seems to be an element of hypocrisy if you represent anywhere in the Murray-Darling Basin because it's totally represented by the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Labor Party who all voted for a 28 per cent reduction in the water. I hope that, if in my area I voted for a 28 per cent reduction in the water in the Mareeba irrigation area, they would tar and feather me, and hang me. I hope that would happen, but it would never happen so long as I've got breath in my soul. I'd never sell my people out and destroy them to please a bunch of ratbag greenies, destroying the people that created this country and the greatness of this country and wouldn't know a tree from a billy goat. None of them would know a tree from a billy goat.</p><p>So, the Murray-Darling cutbacks: in Victoria they claim, 'Oh, if we reinstituted the Murray scheme, it would only really help those people selling fresh milk in the fresh milk market.' Well, the average Victorian farmer for that 20 per cent that goes into the fresh milk market was worth $140,000 per farmer per year if it was restored—if there was a McEwen or a Doug Anthony out there, it would have been restored. God help the Liberal Party who tried to destroy any of those marketing schemes that saw us get prosperity in the sugar industry, prosperity in the dairy industry, prosperity in the egg industry, and we've watched the complete destruction of agriculture in this country to a point where most of the last 15 years we've been a net importer of fruit and vegetables. You have that galoot who is leading the National Party in this place, wandering around with his hat on saying, 'Oh, we will be the food bowl of Asia.' Listen, imbecile, you will be the begging bowl of Asia. If you can't market aggressively—</p> <p class="speaker">Kevin Hogan</p><p>The member for Kennedy will withdraw that remark.</p> <p class="speaker">Bob Katter</p><p>I withdraw that remark, Mr Deputy Speaker. We're talking about drought. I mean, there's one answer to drought—only one answer to drought—and that is to get some water, put it on the ground and grow some grass. I'm going to emphasise here the grazing industry rather than the cropping industry. So, the only answer to drought, which scourged this country as we know for 200 years—and I suspect for 20,000 or 30,000 years—is to put some water on the ground to make grass grow.</p><p>The only place we have a reliable water supply is north of the line, and the Prime Minister of Australia said, 'Where is the line?' I said, 'From Tennant Creek through Mount Isa to Charters Towers and Mackay. North of that line your rivers and creeks run every year.' I speak with great authority because my own family has lived on the Cloncurry River, some 400 or 500 kilometres from the sea, for 130 years that I know of. Judging from my dark complexion, I suspect a hell of a lot longer—and I'm very proud of the fact too. It has run every single year in white man's history—400 kilometres—and our annual rainfall is 14 inches in Cloncurry. But, because it all comes within a month or two months, the river runs every year. Every year we get the monsoons. Every year our rivers and creeks run. Every single one of them runs. For a large proportion of my life, I owned 250,000 acres of North Queensland, and with a partner we owned 500,000 acres, and the rivers and creeks ran every single year. So all you have to do is just hold a little bit of that water back—because that's all you can hold back with the vast floods that we have every year—spread it out and grow grass.</p><p>For the first time in my life I see—sorry, I take that back because the much-maligned Malcolm Fraser government and the much-maligned Bjelke-Petersen government launched the great and visionary Bradfield Scheme to turn inland Australia into 'a garden of flowers'. That was the expression that John Crew Bradfield used to describe what was going to happen in Central Australia. Please, God, if Hells Gates is built the way it should be built, that's Bradfield stage 1. But today we stand up and say to the government: 'Hold a little bit of that water back.' We're not farmers, we're cattlemen. Cattle walk around on the grass and they eat the grass. That's what we're going to do. If you have a bad drought, it will pay us not to have the cattle walking around and eating the grass. We'll cut the grass and feed it in troughs and we can carry 20 times more cattle. If your cattle or your sheep are hungry, send them up to us in the bad times, because it will pay us to cut the grass and trough-feed the cattle. There is your answer to drought. When it rains back in New South Wales, you take them back home again. So we have the answers. If North Queensland were a separate country, it would be the wettest country on earth—wetter than Brazil or any other country. We have miles of water, but the trouble is we don't have rivers. We have a flood and then we have a series of waterholes. All we're saying is: harvest a little bit of the flood and hold it back.</p><p>On the reconstruction board on debt, my son, the member of parliament for North-West Queensland, in the state parliament, headed the committee that went all over the state. I went to four of those meetings. At every meeting, every farmer stood up and said, 'We want no more debt.' I speak with authority because I was the minister responsible for the state bank in Queensland. We borrowed about $700 million. We borrowed it at about two or three per cent and we loaned it to farmers at two or three per cent. It didn't cost anything. We just got the interest from them and paid it to the banks. We borrowed the money; we took the mortgages. This is the critical point: we took the mortgages. We were not prepared to risk the taxpayers' money. We took the mortgages. So, if they went broke, we foreclosed, and we did foreclose on about five per cent of them. We brought the entire sugar industry through. Not only did we not lose money but we made about $200 million profit because, three years later, the price went up, as it always does. It's cyclical as in other industries. We went back to 8½ per cent interest and we made about $200 million out of it. The government will not go to a reconstruction board approach, which puts no government money in jeopardy. The farmer, who might owe a million dollars and pays $80,000 a year in interest and repayments is suddenly paying $10,000, and he can get through. With a family assistance package, the good ones can get through. The bad ones should be out of the industry anyway. That's what happened.</p> <p class="speaker">Kevin Hogan</p><p>The member will resume his seat. The Manager of Opposition Business.</p> <p class="speaker">Tony Burke</p><p>I move:</p><p class="italic">That the debate be adjourned.</p> <p class="speaker">Tony Smith</p><p>The question is that the motion moved by the Manager of Opposition Business, that the debate now be adjourned, be agreed to.</p>
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