Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Customs Legislation Amendment (Border Compliance and Other Measures) Bill 2006. A lot of the officers will have facilitated and made easier a lot of the jobs they are currently doing and would agree with the bill. However, in a port like Cairns or Townsville, fairly typically we have Customs boats, police boats, national parks boats and fisheries boats. There is a ridiculous waste of money and duplication here. The Americans have a single, integrated coastguard service that covers all of those things. They have a boat that can do the job adequately and quickly, and that is the sort of approach that should be used here. I truly believe that the government’s reluctance to move in that direction is simply a matter of politics—it is because the ALP came up with the idea of a coastguard.

I do not profess to be an expert in sea warfare—anything but. However, I would flatter myself enough to say that I know plenty about land warfare, having been a platoon commander for a long time. But the assertion by the government that the 10 frigates that we have—I think eight are built and two are on the way—are an adequate defence of Australia is an appalling assertion. I do not want to speculate here on the circumstances in which we might find ourselves needing a naval force, but we may have to confront a naval force at some point, and there is an assumption that the Americans are going to come and save us. You really want to read your history books if you think that the Americans are going to come and save us. Quite frankly, they were bombed into the First World War and they were bombed into the Second World War. They had the strongest possible reluctance to go into either war.

Whilst they are doing a bit of international police work, it is to look after their oil interests. I am not condemning America for that. Maybe that is something you do have to fight wars over. However, where their vital interest is concerned they will act, but where their vital interest is not concerned they are historically consistent in not acting. When England was bleeding to death in the Second World War, and despite the fact that the people there had a common racial background and in every respect had a strong relationship with the United States, there was no way the United States were going to buy into the Second World War. It was only when the Japanese bombed them that they came in.

The people who lived in Northern Australia in the last war will recall that they were actually handed over to the Japanese with the infamous Brisbane Line. It was not actually a Brisbane Line for those people who came from Western Australia—it was a golden boomerang, and the rest of us were handed over. General Mackay’s proposal to the federal cabinet said that all they could defend was a line that went from Brisbane through to Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and that the rest of it could not be defended. Whether it was a good or bad idea, it was the only possible way that they could approach the situation that very rapidly arose. One moment they were yawning and not very worried about a war that was far away in Europe, and the next minute they were fighting for their lives with the Japanese six weeks away from invading Australia.

We need provision of enough patrol boats to do this job. Over the last three or four months, I have run into three people who work on patrol boats. I cannot say where I ran into them, but they were very far away geographically. Each of them gave me exactly the same story. They sit out there, at the edge of our territorial waters, and there are Indonesian and foreign vessels fishing just beyond the territorial limit. When they have finished their patrol duty and return to their base, whether it be Cairns, Darwin or wherever, the Indonesian vessels come straight in. When the new patrol boat goes out, those fishing vessels leave our territorial waters. It is a game of cat and mouse.

It is no news—or it should not be news—to this House that, tragically, in 2005 there were 13,018 sightings of foreign vessels. I have come into this place having taken riding instructions from the fishermen at Karumba. They said that they sight them all the time. Quite frankly, I had my doubts as to whether the boys were having me on a bit, but I did my job—thank goodness. It was disclosed on 60 Minutes and has not been denied by the government at any stage—in fact, effectively it has been affirmed by the government—that there have been 13,000 sightings. If there have been 13,000 sightings, I think we can safely conclude that there are 20,000 vessels in our waters.

The Australian government have decided that, to keep our fish stocks, we should allow only 6,000 vessels to fish in our waters. But they will come into this place and effectively affirm that there are some 20,000 foreign vessels fishing in our waters, and we are going to build two destroyers to rein them in. I cannot see two destroyers running around the perimeter of Australia—the 12,000 or 15,000 kilometres of coastline.

There is an ideological fanaticism which started in the ALP under Keating, and the disease has spread to the other side of the House, who are now occupying the government benches, that you must not do anything to adversely affect trade—we must have free trade. It is a unique occurrence. I do not think it has ever happened in the history of the country, but most certainly no other country on earth is carrying out this experiment, with the exception of New Zealand, which is rapidly becoming one of the poorer countries on earth.

We have a huge coastline to look after, so, if a five or 10 per cent customs duty that does not breach WTO regulations in any way, shape or form is imposed, it might give a tiny bit of relief to some of our manufacturers and other people. That money can then be turned over into building patrol boats. I am told that we need a hundred patrol boats. To properly police 10,000 kilometres of Northern Australian coastline, you would most certainly need dozens and dozens of patrol boats. But I do not like to come into this place and say: let the government find an extra $1,000 million a year. I want to say how you are going to find—

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