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

Recently, I was invited to address the Young Liberals (Australia) conference. I think the blokes who invited me were consequently sacked. The president there said I should be Prime Minister of Australia. I naturally agreed with him and felt he was a very wise and perspicacious person. He struck me as a bloke who was not a fool—although this seemed to be the indication of a fool. He said: ‘In Australia we don’t have conservatives who espouse conservative values. We have a lot of people who call themselves conservatives, who run around trying to explain that they are not really conservatives at all.’ That is what I have watched tonight—people on this side of the House who claim to be conservatives. I said, ‘Be specific.’ He said, ‘Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.’ I do not think I would agree with any of Margaret Thatcher’s policies—none at all—but there is no doubt that what he was saying was correct. These people were enormously successful politicians.

I served under a bloke called Bjelke-Petersen. We were described as troglodytes and rednecks and everything else. We moved legislation to make abortion illegal in Queensland—there was vagueness in the law. The verdict of the people was 72 per cent against what we were trying to do, but there was no doubt that the then Premier believed it was the right thing to do. It was not a matter of whether or not we got votes out of it—that was the right thing to do and he was doing it. In the subsequent election, at the expense of the Liberal and Labor parties, our vote went up about eight per cent.

Whilst they disagreed with what we were doing, it was clear that we were acting out of moral beliefs. That is the thing that people will respect and follow. They will not respect you people on this side of the House getting up one after the other and making all sorts of arguments why this is not quite right but you vote for it anyway. Let me state unequivocally that the bill is a bill of approbation for homosexual relationships. Either you believe that that is a good thing for society or you do not.

Many of you know my background. I spent many, many years in the bush with people of Aboriginal descent, and they have what they call ‘Quinkan’ beliefs. This is devil-devil country. Devil-devil country at the back of Cooktown was Black Mountain, which was alive with taipan snakes. The Quinkan lore, if you like, for Mount Fox—there were no trees on it—said that devil-devils come out and stick spears in you. That almost certainly indicates—for people with geology backgrounds such as I have—sulphur emissions which are alive volcanically. In fact, it was a live volcanic area about 10,000 years ago. The Quinkan for the Ingham area is ‘water from mountain to mountain’. If we have a double flood, the entire coastal plain will go 25 feet under water and probably result in thousands of lost lives. The point I am making here is their belief system—Madam Deputy Speaker, you shake your head and laugh—

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