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port kembla

Placename
port kembla
Layer
Poetry in Handard Test
Type
Other

Details

Latitude
-34.46346
Longitude
150.90148269117583
Start Date
1962-05-15
End Date
1962-05-15

Description

parliament.no: 24
session.no: 1
period.no: 1
chamber: SENATE
page.no: 1355.0
speaker: Senator BENN
speaker.id: K1T
title: Second Reading
electorate: QLD
type: bill
state: Not Available
party: ALP
role: Not Available
incumbent party: False
poet: C.J.Dennis
poem: Glugs of Gosh

Sources

ID
td1525

Extended Data

index
595.0
para
- Queensland certainly has power; but I will concede to Senator Henty that we cannot generate power as cheaply as it can be generated in Tasmania with its hydro-electric schemes. However, Queensland has an unlimited supply of coal. This coal-field about which I am now speaking is estimated to have 1,000,000,000 tons of coal. It is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of such a quantity of coal. Yet nothing will be done with it, except that it will be exported. I remember reading years ago some poems by C. J. Dennis. He wrote about The Glugs of Gosh. The Glugs were a group of people who were happy to sell their stones and rocks to people who visited them. The payment was in trinkets or something glittering - something to amuse them. This arrangement continued and The Glugs of Gosh traded all their stones and rocks to the people who called upon them. I say that the people of Queensland at present are like The Glugs of Gosh. They are trading their natural resources for money which will go quickly and leave them with nothing in place of their natural resources. Queensland wants something of greater economic value than what it will get out of this agreement. It will certainly provide a little employment for some people. The coal has to be won from the mines. The railway line, if it eventuates, will have to be constructed from Gladstone to the coal-field. Then there will be the loading, the unloading and so on. A place will be needed to stockpile the coal as it is brought into Gladstone. I appreciate all those things; but they will provide employment for only a few people, whereas, if we had some works in which the coal could be used to greater advantage, we would be well on the way to providing more employment for the people of Queensland. I read in a newspaper to-day that only yesterday a ship brought to Newcastle some kind of new furnace required for the Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited. This furnace, which is of the very latest design, will be used in the manufacture of steel. I believe it is known as the oxygen type of furnace. It will certainly boost the manufacture of steel in Newcastle or Port Kembla. That is all very well in its way. That company, of course, manufactures steel and processes it. That gives employment to thousands of people. But Queensland is denied that right. Senator Paltridge is looking at me. Is it not true that in Western Australia a plant costing about £10,000,000 will be built to convert bauxite into alumina? That is a start. Once that plant gets going, it will provide employment for Western Australians. I see the picture this way: This coal will go to a country that buys the greatest quantity of greasy merino wool on the Australian market. The wool goes to Japan. There it is manufactured into textiles and sold to the countries of the world that require textiles, including Australia. We are sending our raw materials - not one, but several of them - out of the country. Our natural resources, our riches are flowing out of the country and nothing is coming in to replace them. That is the sad part of the picture.