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

I am very perturbed that when I first went into parliament some 32 years ago the only way that you could enter the house of a person was, really, by getting a piece of paper off a judge or at the very least a magistrate and now every pettifogging official known to man has the right with impunity to walk into your house. Inside the joint party room in Brisbane for some 20 years battle after battle was fought over this, and I can say with great pride that in 1989, when we left office, there were hardly any circumstances under which a person could enter your home without getting the authority of a judge or at the very least a magistrate. So I am very perturbed about that aspect of the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget Measures) Bill 2006.

Really it behoves the government and its members to make a stand on this. Having been a minister for the best part of a decade, and a very senior minister at that, I might add, I do not hesitate to say that, with the way the system works, you get the public servant who wants to make life easy for himself so he thinks he can just walk in anytime. I have to say that the power that these public servants exercise has gone to their heads. They get a real buzz out of this sort of thing.

We had a case in Mareeba where a very lovely young couple were at the rodeo with the person who is now the magistrate for that area. They were migrants to Australia. She was a very pretty girl and they had a lovely child, and David was looking after the child all day at the rodeo and having a tonne of fun. They were great citizens; they built this beautiful zoo for North Queensland, with lions and tigers. It was a very much needed adjunct to the tourist package we were able to offer in Far North Queensland for the people coming to Cairns in that region. And one morning at 6 o’clock the Nazis came in. That is what I would describe them as: Nazis. They kicked the door open, quite literally. She was feeding this little less-than-one-year-old baby at her breast, and she was in her pyjamas. She was terrified, and she ran into a corner and started screaming. She said, ‘Could I go to the toilet?’ and they said, ‘No, you will stay right there.’

This actually happened. It did not get anywhere near the amount of publicity that it should have got, and I have endeavoured to secure the names of the people and the officers in charge because they will go on a certain list that I keep, and they will cross my gun sights somewhere down the track. They proceeded, then—these same dreadful people—to bankrupt them and close down this magnificent accoutrement. What it was all over was that for two years the person had asked for the details of fencing, and since after two years he could no get it—he had already purchased the animals—he proceeded to build the fencing in accordance with the game regulations that existed in South Africa, where all the big game reserves were. It was because he had done it without their express permission. It was not a matter of permits; he had the permits. They were the circumstances of the case.

I use this case to illustrate. This is Australia in 2000; this is not Germany in the 1930s. But every pettifogging official has the right to violate. If there is something that we inherited from our English forebears it is that an Englishman’s home is his castle. If there was one great precept outside of the rule of law and habeas corpus, ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ would be that third great proposition. We inherit it from the English-speaking race.

The corollary of that, if I was to put it in Australian terms, would be that in Australia in my backyard I am King Billy. In at least one little place on earth, I am the boss. Those members of the House who want to stay in this place—because about a quarter of you will be thrown out over the next six years; the actual statistic, I think, is that something like 20 per cent gets thrown out of this place every six years—richly deserve to be thrown out if they sit there supinely and allow the powers to go to little pettifogging officials to violate the sacredness of that little bit of space in which a person is king. No-one is allowed to be king; in this place we are the kings. The people are never the kings.

But if you want to be popular then the most popular politician in all of democratic history, dating back to the Romans and the Greeks, was in fact ‘the Kingfisher’, Hughie Long of Louisiana. He used to have a song and, whatever public or social function he was at, he would demand that everyone sing his song: Every Man a King. He would put his right fist up and he would say, ‘Every man a king,’ and people loved him. They still speak with reverence, and when there was a famous thing done recently on the television old people had tears in their eyes at the remembrance of Hughie Long, who believed that every man was a king. Well, not in this place. Every little pettifogging official is the king over you, and he can walk into your little domain and treat you like dirt.

The worst rioting that occurred when I was Aboriginal affairs minister was on my third day as minister. One of the great things that we prided ourselves on was that there was no rioting by the time I had finished as minister. But the rioting was precipitated because the government of the day had decided, in their wisdom, to ban alcohol. There is a case on Palm Island which is getting nationwide publicity, where the current state government has banned alcohol. White people can drink but black people are not allowed to in the state of Queensland. We took that legislation off the books in Queensland and then I personally as minister took away the regulations, I am proud to say.

But these little pettifogging officials came in and told the gentleman who later on was the chairman of the council there—he was a very popular figure there—that he could not drink and to hand over all of his grog. This public official, in the presence of his children, went over and smashed the stubby out of his hands, against the wall. The little children ran out crying, and, like every decent Australian would, he flattened the public official. He was put in jail for two years for doing that—in jail for two years for defending himself in his own home and countermanding the humiliation that was put upon him and terrifying for his children. So I am very worried about this aspect of the bill.

Having said that, I am enormously pleased to see the provisions in here for women—let’s face it—who are suffering domestic violence. I was up to my neck in the terrible Kyte case, which came to national prominence in Charters Towers. The insurance company would not pay the money to those poor people. Their house had burnt down and the insurance company agreed to pay $300 for a house that was insured for $14,000. This is going back a long time now. Without going into the details of the case, this was absolutely outrageous. This poor woman with her five kids was out under a tree. Some friends had given her tarpaulins and someone had given her a tiny caravan, but her husband, a reformed alcoholic, went back on the grog and gave her a terrible time. She had no alternative housing. This bill provides alternative housing. If we had been able to provide her with alternative housing, what followed would not have occurred.

Because of the situation, it was decided by the authorities—rightly or wrongly—to put the husband in a mental institution. He escaped from the mental institution and cut her throat from ear to ear. She was discovered by her 15-year-old daughter, and the husband was under the bed with a carving knife in his hand and with blood everywhere. Five little children had no father and no mother. It was a case where I think that, if we had had these sorts of provisions that are being put forward today, the terrible tragedy would not have occurred and those five little children would have had a father and a mother to bring them up.

The most important aspect of the bill from where I sit is the provisions enabling people to access the old age pension. I could give case after case here but I do not want to take up the time of the House all day. I will give two cases. A very generous couple in Innisfail, people very close to me, literally gave all of their properties to their kids. They did it thinking that they could get the pension. They did not get the pension and they had to go back to their children to get money. I am oversimplifying it but that is roughly the case. They had a little bit of money. But the children were in such dire straits in the sugar cane industry that they were not able to help out. They were flat out staying alive themselves. I truly believe that those people actually went hungry during those years because of the pernicious, restrictive provisions that exist and the attitude that governments in Australia have had to the farming community—the brutalisation of country Australia that has taken place.

The second case happened quite recently. One of maybe the most prominent farmers in Australia but most certainly in North Queensland got up in a meeting and said, ‘I’m working harder now’—at 65 or 66 years of age; whatever it is, he is over pension age—‘than when I came to Australia when I was 20.’ He said that one of his boys had just walked off the place because, even though he is one of the biggest farmers in Australia in the category of farming that he is in—he is a very big farmer—he just cannot make enough cash flow thanks to the likes of Woolworths and Coles and the previous government that has allowed them to take 82 per cent of the marketplace. As big as you want to get, you still cannot make a living! One of his boys has had to leave the farm, which was heartbreaking for him.

We pride ourselves on being peasants; we are closely attached to the land. I always find it remarkable that people come into this place and talk about Aboriginal land rights and cry about the Aboriginals’ relationship to the land. I would say that many more whitefellas than original Australians have committed suicide and died in their efforts to try and hold on to their land. Many Aboriginals died fighting for their land, but I think a lot more whitefellas in the years since have suffered the same fate.

Going back to this particular person, he falls short of the requirements in the act and so he cannot get a pension. His wife is now very sick and he is not enjoying good health but he has to stagger on. There is no other way out for these people except to walk off their farm. There is not enough money for him to stay alive, there is not enough money for his son to pay someone to come in and work full time to take his father’s place and there is not enough money to buy his father out. Family after family is caught in this vice throughout Australia.

This place does not seem to understand what is happening throughout Australia. I see the member for Parkes here. With all due respect, it would be a good idea if he understood that agriculture in this country is simply closing down. Our sheep numbers are down 50 per cent; our cattle numbers are down 26 per cent. The sugar production industry is collapsing completely. At this stage we have only lost about 12 per cent of our production, but it will be catastrophic the way it is going. I cannot speak with authority about the wheat industry but I most certainly can about the dairy industry. Milk production is down 10 per cent and butter and cheese production is down 20 per cent. That is five of the six major agricultural items falling straight through the floor.

I have said on many occasions in this House that there is no excuse for it. We just have to follow Brazil or the United States on the ethanol trail. The National Party wonders why they are spat upon in Queensland, and they are literally spat upon. I would hate to be that senator they have. When he goes out there, they hate him. The reason for that is that we have tried to get ethanol out of the National Party, which held the two key portfolios in the federal government. And what have we got off them? I will tell you what we have got: ethanol production and consumption in Australia has dropped 70 per cent. They have taxed ethanol at 12c a litre and, quite frankly, promoted all of the disadvantages.

Mr Truss as late as last week put out a press statement saying that all mandating will do is introduce ethanol from Brazil, as if you would go from nought to 10 per cent overnight. Of course, every single other country phases it in over a period of time. Doesn’t this man know anything? In the United States they have a four-year phase-in period for five per cent; they are almost at five per cent now. I am sure when they get through that four years they will phase in another five per cent and move to 10 per cent. Their government has already said that they will be replacing 75 per cent of their oil imports with, inter alia, ethanol. And they unashamedly say that that is to help rural communities in the United States. A major factor is to protect their source of oil, of course, and to provide an alternative. That is their major reason for going down this pathway. But they do not hesitate to say, ‘This is to provide jobs for our people in rural United States.’ Brazil, quite unashamedly, went down that pathway and technologically is now miles ahead of Australia. We have to go over there for almost all of our agricultural technology.

I will tell you what has happened in the sugar industry in particular. Every time I go to Innisfail there are another five or 10 farms that have just sold out. People in this place seem to think that if you go broke with sugar you will go into something else. That is not what is happening. This land is being sold to lifestylers. You can buy 100 acres in paradise, with jungles, waterfalls and everything—it is magic country. So they just buy the land. Personally, I must admit that I thought we could let it go back to being a pristine wilderness. I listened to a talk by the head of the Wet Tropics Management Authority, a retired general, General Grey. He said that the strongest argument that we have for preserving our agriculturists is what has happened in Mareeba, where the deregulation by the Keating government of the tobacco industry, and the subsequent inaction by the current government, led to the complete collapse and close-down of that industry. That is now taking place in Victoria as well.

What happened in Mareeba is most relevant to this bill. The old people simply walked off their land. They could not make a living out of it. They could not sell it at any reasonable price to meet their debts. The land has been bought up by lifestylers and sits fallow. It has not gone back to a pristine wilderness—it grows weeds. I would not have believed what General Grey said except that I recently inspected a property outside of Babinda—a young man wanted to buy it. It had been 200 acres under sugar cane. I walked over six acres, and the entire six acres was completely covered by Singapore daisy and by the giant sensitive weed. Both of them are dreadful scourges of the land in Far North Queensland and are declared noxious weeds. The young man told me it was all covered—the whole 200 acres. So there will not be any pristine wilderness or regrowth of trees. The people that have bought it cannot possibly afford to keep ploughing out the giant sensitive weed and all of those other things. And to put the land under trees would cost an enormous amount of money, and they do not want to do that. They want to have a nice place to live and a nice lifestyle. They do not want to be sitting in a monoculture plantation, that’s for certain.

The alternative to doing such things is what has been happening to date: these poor people have had to sell out to lifestylers and the land has fallen into a shocking state. These are the arguments put up by the Europeans for the protection of their farmers. Every country will defend with aggression their right to keep farming and agriculture going in their countries, except our governments in Australia do not. We get a lecture on free markets or free trade every time we open our mouths about whether we should have ethanol. And hasn’t that been marvellously successful! In a magazine that comes out of Melbourne there is an article by John Corboy, the man who rescued SPC and arguably now the biggest farmer in Australia since Peter Menegazzo died. (Time expired)

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