Katter, Bob, MP

Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (12:27): I cannot help commenting on the very valuable contribution to the House by the previous speaker, the member for Murray, on these bills, the Export Charges (Imposition—General) Bill 2015, the Export Charges (Imposition—Customs) Bill 2015, and the Export Charges (Collection) Bill 2015. And I very much appreciate that the minister and the opposition shadow minister are both in the parliament. I think one of my greatest regrets about how this place functions is that heads of department and ministers are not required to be in the House for legislation. In the state parliament in Queensland the minister and the head of department are always required to be in the House for debates. If these people are elected by the people of Australia, then it behoves the minister to be in here and listen to those people. They should be the voice of the Australian people. But it is no use using your voice in here if the relevant minister is not here to listen, so I say to the minister: a very great thankyou and tribute for being here. It is one of the few times I have spoken when the minister has actually been in the parliament. Having said those things, I want to take up two points made by the previous speaker on the cost of water and the cost of electricity. One of my friends recently sold up—was bankrupted and walked off after 51 years of farming, five generations, bereft of everything in the world. He was a man who had the great respect of his peers and was elected chairman of his mill for some 15 years—highly respected, well loved, a star performer as a farmer, yet he sold up. One of the reasons is that the price of water has now gone to close to $100 a megalitre. The Queensland government said: 'Oh, we had to do that. That's not us putting the water charges up; that's just the electricity charges.' I do not want to discriminate on a political basis, but both state governments in Queensland were involved in privatising and deregulating the electricity system, as in the other states. And Australia now has the second-highest electricity charges in the world, second to Germany. In Queensland we have gone from an average household price of $670 to $2,400 in the 12 years since the wonders of privatisation and deregulation, the wonders of our market fundamentalists who took control in both parties. Not only do we have to pay $100, but the last time I looked we were paying $38 for water and in California they were paying $17 for their water. I do not know what the costs are in California at the present moment, but the differentials will be far wider now than they were before. Most of the Brazilians' sugar goes into an ethanol stream. Most of our sugar cane is used to produce sugar. If you produce sugar you are paid $340 a tonne and if you produce ethanol you are paid $420 a tonne. There are differentials between our farm situation and the farm situation in the other countries that have much lower priced water, much lower priced electricity—you have got to pump water—and the differential is in areas like our failure to commit to ethanol. We are now the only country on earth outside of Africa and, of course, the oil producing countries without any biofuels mandate. All the European countries, all the North American countries, all the South American countries and almost every one of the Asian countries—China, India, Japan—have moved to biofuels. So they get tremendous advantage on us. The relevance of this is that the minister has moved to put some charges on product coming into the country. This is happening against a background where, the last time the OECD produced figures, Australia's tariff subsidy effect was 4.1 per cent and the OECD countries had 39 per cent. So we are at an enormous disadvantage. Their farmers get 40 per cent of their income from the government. Our farmers only get four per cent of their income from the government. I have never stood here and advocated that we get money from the government. But what I am saying is: do not come and preach to us about a level playing field when the rest of them are running the 100 metres and they have got a 36 metres start on us. What is even more important is that the government are skiting about the interest charges coming down. The last time I looked, our interest rate average for the last couple of years was 2.8 per cent, while for foreign countries it was 2.5 per cent. So our dollar is driven up through the roof by interest rates set by the Reserve Bank that are a thousand per cent higher than the rest of the world. Our dollar, when it was allowed to freefall, went to 49c under Keating and 51c under Costello, and then both of them drove it back up again—who only knows why? Clearly, the dollar should be at 50c. It is nearly twice that value at the present time. Mr Joyce interjecting— Mr Fitzgibbon interjecting— Mr KATTER: I will just wait until everyone has finished. Maybe I should speak to a tree outside. Mr Fitzgibbon: We were talking about ethanol, Bob. Mr KATTER: I am not saying that you people are wood or anything like that. We are talking about a playing field here, and I am going to be very specific on this legislation in a moment. But I just want to give the third background point, which is that if we sell in Australia we have only two people to sell to: Woolworths and Coles. I will get up anywhere, at any time, in any place and say that they have 90 per cent of the food market in this country. So what have we got here? We have a 36 per cent disadvantage on the issue of subsidies and tariffs, we have a 50 per cent disadvantage on the value of the dollar, which is artificially propped up by interest rates that are a thousand per cent higher than the rest of the world, and we have only two people to sell to—Woolworths and Coles. The market fundamentalists that occupy both of the sides of this parliament told us deregulation would be good for us. Go and tell that to a dairyman. The day before deregulation he was on 59c. The day after, he was on 42c. Who in the world would say that that was a fair thing? Seven thousand dairy farmers hit the wall, and we all know how some of them hit the wall. Let me now concentrate specifically upon this bill. A very good friend of mine spent some seven years of his life setting up a game meat processing plant at Mount Isa. He used all of his savings and a lot of money he did not have, because he borrowed money, to build this game meat processing works. The impositions imposed upon us by the European Union and, specifically, France caused our federal inspectors to turn him around in circles for three years. When you have a couple of million dollars out there and your own departmental officials here in Australia that are supposed to be working for us are jumping to the tune played by the Europeans, what happens is you go bankrupt. My friend survived bankruptcy. But there is no game meat processing plant employing 34 people in Mount Isa in a town where we lost 2,000 mining jobs, because the demands put upon us if we want to sell into Europe are so enormous and so costly and it so impossible to get through the barriers that you may as well not try. Please God, the minister will be imposing on them some of those stringent conditions that they apply to us, and we praise him for it. In the case of flowers—and I thought this was rather remarkable—there is a $320 an hour inspection fees for our exporters. The flower producers that I represent up on the Atherton Tableland are paying $320 inspection fees on flowers going overseas. We protect the overseas people. The flowers coming into the country are supposed to have five per cent inspection, so already one-twentieth have the costs that we have. They have a huge market advantage on us that was imposed upon us by the government. Our government charges us $320 an hour for an inspection fee. Of course, they are only five per cent, so they have one-twentieth of the inspection cost. So we are effectively subsidising the import of flowers into Australia and imposing a horrific burden upon the exporters of flowers. Even if you believed in this free-market rubbish, which no-one on the planet with any brains has in the entire history of the world—including, I might add, Adam Smith, and I can give you the quotes from his books if someone wants them. We had hoped that minister was giving us a little bit of differential back. If they are putting these demands upon us, then we are going to put the same demands upon them. Let's forget that there is any sort of bias in this whatsoever. We have a proposition that you can bring into Australia everything you like and there will only be a five per cent inspection. The five per cent inspection is ridiculous rubbish because, if you have a look at the figures, the monetary outlays on import inspection, you realise you are looking at something below one per cent. There is no way there could be anything remotely resembling a five per cent inspection. A number of Customs officials, whom I just happen to be friendly with through the Lions Club and various other things, have told me that five per cent is an absolute joke. We would be lucky if we are doing 0.5 per cent, because they just do not have the resources; they do not have the people to do it. So, if the minister is getting for himself some more resources to at least go to five per cent, we applaud that. But we would like to see our import services provide us with the protection that the Europeans enjoy when someone tries to get into Europe. As far as America goes, try to get mangoes into America. Try to do it. Because it suits Dole and Chiquita and the big companies in America, you can get in pretty easily if you are coming out of Central America where the Americans own all the farms. But try to get mangoes in from Australia, where Chiquita and Dole do not own the farms. Mind you, the way that things are going, they probably will own the farms shortly. Both Chiquita and Dole have a very real presence in Australia now in the mango industry, as well is in the banana industry and a number of other industries. Try to get into America. I wish you well. I think we are in our 35th year of trying to get into America with our mangoes, but, because it does not suit Dole or Chiquita, we cannot get into America. We applaud the minister, but I have to say that I was disappointed to find out that the charges were also going up on our exports. I thought they were just going up on our imports, and I was very lavish in my praise of the minister—some breath of fresh air after 25 years of darkness. I know the pressures that are upon the minister and I make allowances for that. We want to thank very sincerely the government and the minister for increasing the charges and increasing, I hope, the inspection regime of product coming into this country. The area that I represent has been hit by Panama disease and the banana industry has been hit by black sigatoka. There is papaya fruit fly and citrus canker. Every one of these diseases is a breakdown in our quarantine inspection service. That the quarantine service could have allowed beef from Brazil—a foot-and-mouth disease country—into Australia is an absolute disgrace. I must say, in fairness to the government of the day—I cannot remember which government was there—the person in charge of AQIS in that period was transferred out. Very interestingly, she went across to trade, where the free trade philosophy was extremely— (Time expired)