The Reserve Bank of Australia says we're going broke and headed into a recession.
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Last week, we saw the Reserve Bank reduce interest rates by one per cent - a record low rate. To put more money back in people's hands, they bring the interest rates down.
This means the people can build a shed in the backyard, extend the work shed or water the bottom paddock.
You stimulate the economy by borrowing money cheaply and this is called monetary policy. I don't think it works. I have never thought it works.
During the Great Depression, monetary policy was laughed at. It was fiscal policy which worked. You went out there and you built something.
During the Great Depression, the Americans built the Tennessee Valley Authority which then produced more free electricity than in the whole of Australia at the time, free and forever (and it was actually an irrigation project).
They constructed the Boulder Dam which turned California into the biggest food the producing State on earth.
We have done none of those things. Here we are again playing around with monetary policy. There's not one single project of national significance on the agenda of the ALP or LNP.
Now, I've got to be fair to Mr Morrison and say, yes, he's put up Hell's Gate, which is the Bradfield Scheme Stage 1, but I've also got to say that he's taken his eye off the ball and it is not what I'd call Hell's Gates proper, a money-generating project which could supply all of North Queensland's electricity for forever, and provide Australia's fuel security.
So the big picture vision of the Tennessee Valley Authority, or the Snowy Mountains in Australia; all of this big picture stuff is completely lost while we're fooling around with monetary policy and giving everybody a little $1,000 tax cut.
How infantile, compared to building this nation by building a by rail line into the Galilee, owned wholly by the people, and opening up the Galilee coalfields to the nation, instead of one project/mine.
How infantine compared to starting to build giant gas projects or visionary projects, such as the Bradfield Scheme.
Australia is in a position to learn from this. Get the dozers out.
Bob Katter,
Federal member for Kennedy