Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (16:17): I wish these people had gone to the same university that I did, because I was taught when I went there that, if there are two buyers in a market and 10,000 sellers in the market, the sellers are going to get screwed. Every university that I know of in the world has said that. In Australia, 90 per cent of the food that is sold is sold by two people. You've got two people to sell that milk to. If you're stupid enough to stay on the free market and count on Woolworths and Coles being Father Christmas, you deserve, my friend, what you get—and you'll get it. You've got to be judged on your outcomes. You must be judged. I was a free marketeer when I entered this place, and I just saw disaster after disaster after disaster. In the National Party room—and I'm being a little improper here—there were, I think, 16 members. Every one of them got up and tenaciously spoke and opposed dairy deregulation. All of them got up and opposed it. When they came back in here, they all held their hands up. I'll tell you how successful you've been with your free markets: The wool industry deregulated under Keating—you blokes didn't have the glory of undermining the industry and then deregulating it. We had 172 million sheep in a regulated industry. We now have 66 million. Mr Falinski: Do you want to go back to the wool price? Where are you getting these figures from? Mr KATTER: My friend, I'll go into your electorate and debate it with you. In the meantime, shut up. In the cattle industry we had 32 million; now we've got 22 million. In the sugar industry we're down 15 per cent. In the grain industry, we're at a 16 per cent disadvantage against the Americans. So your sheep are down, like, 60 per cent, your cattle are down, like, 30 to 40 per cent, your sugar's down 15 per cent and your dairy production is down nearly 50 per cent—what a great success story! But you've opened up all these markets. Well, in the state I come from, our biggest employer is, in fact, the sugarcane industry. 'Oh, the free market's got us into America.' No, it didn't. We don't send any sugar there at all. With the biggest economy in the world—Europe—no sugar is going there. With the third-biggest economy on earth, China, we have a little tiny bit going in. With India, there is no sugar going in there at all. With Brazil, the fifth-biggest economy, there is no sugar going in there at all. So where are your free markets? Here's the biggest industry in Queensland—where is your free market? Where did we get market access? Tell me. Here's the outcome: we are now a net importer of pork, a net importer of seafood and, believe it or not, a net importer of fruit and vegetables. Our sheep numbers are down 60 per cent. Our cattle numbers are down 20 or 30 per cent. Our sugar's down 15 per cent. Where is this great benefit from the free market? There's no benefit there at all, and you are seriously standing up in this place and saying it's a good idea that we continue with a free market where the 10,000 dairy producers that are still left out there are going to sell to two buyers, and they expect the two buyers to be Father Christmas. Well, please excuse me for telling you that the directors of Woolworths and Coles have a duty to their owners to maximise profits. The wonderful achievement of deregulating the dairy industry was to take New South Wales and Queensland, overnight, from 58c and 59c a litre down to 40c a litre. That's what happened. With the wool industry—I was a free marketeer at the time; I thought Doug Anthony was dead wrong on the wool—the price of wool increased 300 per cent and stayed up there for 20 years until Keating undermined the scheme and then abolished it. Surprise, surprise, the price fell 300 per cent in the three years afterwards. Well, what an extraordinary coincidence that when the minimum price scheme was introduced the price trebled and then, three years after the scheme was abolished, the price dropped to one-third of what it was. What an incredible coincidence! So, with the propositions that you're putting up here, I openly invite any of you to have me in your electorate arguing with your dairy farmers at a forum. (Time expired)