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

I am the first speaker that has stood up under an America led by Donald Trump. The last speaker started throwing vituperative comments at Donald Trump. I do not follow American politics, but I watched the first republican debate. Whilst all of them did the usual political thing—'You've told lies'—'You believe the Mexicans should go back'—'You believe the Mexicans should not go back'—and all accused each other of the usual political things, he did not make any mention of the other people. What he said—and the honourable member for Gorton at the dispatch box for the opposition would relate to this—was, 'When there is a hiccup in the world economies the Chinese pull their currency down and we give them a lecture. When I become president, we won't be giving them any lecture—we will be giving them a lesson.'

I thought, if I were in America I would be voting for this bloke. This is the tectonic plate movement. This is the end of marketism—the mad free-market system which would deliver control of the economies of the world to people like the Chinese and destroy the Europeans and the Americans. I am not apologising for anyone, because I claim to have a bit of Murri in the family tree and I proudly identify that way, whether I have or not. I have a bit of everything in the family tree, but I am very proud of some of my English forebears—it might not have been their idea to come out here, but they ended up here with a free passage. But I am proud of them for standing up and saying we have had enough of this free-market enlightenment where we will be in a world government with Europe. They said, 'Turn to the valley—we are standing up and looking after the English people.' The Americans have stood up and said, 'We are sick and tired of this business. We've sent all the jobs over to China under this rubbish; we have our people working for nothing because there are millions of people flowing across the border working for nothing. We have had enough of this.'

The American people have stood up. We Australians have to stand up. Unfortunately for you major parties, you are hooked into the other side of the equation. You are the architects of the free market system. To give you some idea of how badly out of step this country is, you great heroes of free marketism: in the world a farmer gets 41 per cent of his income from the government. If you are a farmer anywhere in the world you get 41 per cent of your income from the government—except if you are a farmer in Australia, where you only get 5.6 per cent of your income from the government. That is the wonder of the free market.

We were once a great trading nation. Our biggest export item was wool. Mr Keating started free marketism in this country. No, he did not, actually—Whitlam did. All tariffs were cut by 25 per cent. Thank you, Mr Whitlam! No textile, footwear and clothing industry. No manufacturing. 150,000 Australian workers that had voted for him lost their jobs. Then Mr Keating came in. Of course he was the great architect and founder of free marketism. He no sooner got in then he deregulated the wool industry. What a wonderful achievement! The biggest export item this country had in 1990 was wool. It was bigger than coal. He single-handedly completely destroyed the industry. Within three years we had lost two thirds of our income. Now our country has lost three quarters of its wool production. Thank you, Mr Keating—you are a genius! He proceeded to remove all tariffs. Goodbye, manufacturing industry! Mr Latham, of course, was a rabid Keating supporter. God bless my brothers in the CFMEU for getting rid of both of them—the Labor movement of Australia is well free of that pair.

Of course, the only regret of the Liberals, particularly the Costello Liberals—I would not say the Howard Liberals—is that they could not sell all of the nation's assets that Australians built. They could not sell them all. In our state it was the Labor Party, to their eternal shame, that sold the railways and corporatised—sold, if you like—the electricity industry. It was the Labor Party. And they suffered the worst defeat in the history of Queensland. A party that had had three members 12 years before, the Liberal Party, became the governing party in Queensland. But the Liberals were so stupid that they went to the next election on a policy of selling assets. There is stupid, and there is a really stupid. The Labor Party no longer holds the record for the worst defeat in Queensland history. The Liberal National Party now hold the record for the worst defeat, because they said they were going to sell the assets, the same thing the Labor Party had been thrown out for.

But, in this place here, we have never stopped any sale of Australia's assets. They are not your assets, Mr Crown; they do not belong to you. Those railways were built by the Australian people. That electricity industry was built by the Australian people. It was not built by the Crown, the government or this parliament. It belongs to the Australian people.

I return to bringing people in from overseas. When you walk through those doors of the chamber, you will see two magnificent paintings. One of them is of Charlie McDonald, the first member for Kennedy. I think Charlie gave six of his first seven speeches in this place railing and ranting against migration to Australia. Here we are, 100 years later, and the member for Kennedy is in this place ranting and railing against it. The only people in this country that have stood on their hind legs and fought against what is going on are the CFMEU, and that is why I am proud to be associated with them. They are the only group in this country that have fought against it. The Labor Party and the Liberal Party are bringing 620,000 people a year into this country. Into an economy that is generating just 200,000 jobs, they are bringing 620,000 people. All of those on a student visa can work when they get it—and section 457 visa holders, because they come here to work.

We have fought and literally died for the labour movement. Three of the 12 on the state executive of the AWU, which was just about the only union we had in Queensland in those days, were shot. The entire executive was sentenced to three years hard labour for having a strike. We eventually won the long-fought-for benefits. I say 'benefits', but you could hardly call not having to go down a mine and be blown to pieces a benefit. As I have said constantly in this place, I represent Mount Mulligan. There were 72 human beings blown to death in one hour at Mount Mulligan, and 23 blown to death at Mount Leyshon in Charters Towers, in the Kennedy electorate. Is it any wonder that Charlie McDonald, whose picture is out there, was out there ranting and raving against bringing in people? When we won these conditions, the mining companies said, 'Ha-ha, we'll see about that,' and they brought the coolies in to work the mines, undermining our pay and conditions and taking our jobs off us.

To the shame of the Labor Party in this place, it is them who started the section 457 visas. There were 50,000-odd coming in under the Liberals—I think that figure is correct—and then suddenly there were 200,000 coming in under Labor. Charlie McDonald and the great fathers of the labour movement would turn in their graves if they saw what the Labor Party had become. So Labor instituted the section 457 visa workers.

Under those visa arrangements, there are 300,000; there are 200,000 under the other visa; and there are 200,000 migrants coming into the country. So we are bringing 620,000 into an economy with only 200,000 jobs. And there are over 200,000 school leavers each year in Australia. I asked the Treasurer, 'What financial arrangements are you making for the explosion in welfare in this country as a result of your migration policies?' I expected him to say, 'Oh, they go home,' to which of course I was going to shout out, 'No, they don't.' Tell that to the Americans about the Mexicans coming across the border! They all go home, do they? Of course they do not go home.

When Tony Abbott, a week or two weeks after I asked that question, decided to do identification checks, again, to the shame of the Labor Party, they were screaming and screeching and yelling, 'You can't do that!' Well, if you cannot do that, then all 620,000 are going to be staying in this country each year—which of course we know they are.

It was no surprise that, five days after I asked that question, the Minister for Social Services, Christian Porter—a very sensible and intelligent person, the deputy leader in Western Australia—said that the welfare budget will blow out from a quarter of the entire budget to half of it over the next 10 years. But we are still bringing them in. If there is one good thing that the Liberals have done, that is stop the boats.

I heard the previous speaker get up in this place and talk about 'these poor people, these poor refugees'. A refugee is not a person that looks at a globe of the world and picks a country on the other side of the globe and says, 'I'm going to flee to there.' A refugee is a person that flees for his life across the border. There were 12 million to 15 million refugees after the Second World War; they were all from neighbouring countries. The refugees fleeing Burma, or whatever it calls itself now, fled to Malaysia. You flee across the border. You do not pick a spot on the other side of the globe to go to. That is not fleeing; you are going somewhere that you want to go to.

Why do they want to come here? These people are coming from countries where they are on $5,000-a-year incomes. On welfare here, if you have a couple of kids, you are entitled to $60,000 a year. Why wouldn't they come here? Two and a half thousand of them have died trying to get here. The previous speaker said, 'You are putting these people at risk.' I tell you what is putting them at risk. It is you saying, 'Yes, you can come in.' If we elect the Labor Party here, there will be an open-door policy, as there was previously, for boat people.

There are two countries on earth that will not take these refugees. One is Saudi Arabia and the other one is Dubai. After the last attempt at mass killing, which was on the edge of the Kennedy electorate—some of the people working there were actually from the Kennedy electorate and the town is two kilometres outside the Kennedy electorate—I said, 'Well, that is it for me. There are no more people coming in from the Middle East. We are going to move legislation so that there are no more people coming in from the area between Greece and India—no more people.' I am sorry but it is too risky bringing in new people from North Africa and from the Middle East into this country.

We accept, of course, the persecuted minority groups who are obviously persecuted there—the Sikhs, the Jews, and the Christians. We do not include them in the ban. You say that is anti-Muslim. No, it is not. I did not mention the biggest Muslim country on earth, which is Indonesia. I did not say anything about Indonesia. They do not have any terrorists in Albania; I did not say anything about Albania, and it is a Muslim country. It is not against Muslims. It is against countries that have a culture and a continuous history of extreme violence.

Are you telling me that the Prime Minister—I am going to criticise the Liberals—who has gone out there and make a big man of himself on the international stage saying, 'I'm going to bring 18,000 refugees in and there are going to be no terrorists amongst them. They're going to come from Middle Eastern countries, and they are not going to be Christian or Jewish or Sikhs, but there are going to be no terrorists amongst them.' Is there anyone in this country who seriously believes that proposition?

I warn the major parties that we other parties got 25 per cent in the last election, and we will get much more in the next election. When we hit 30 per cent your day is finished, and you deserve it to be finished. You have destroyed every manufacturing industry in this country— (Time expired)

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