Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move an amendment:

That all words after "whilst" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House calls on the Government to immediately stop all foreign takeovers of agricultural lands and place a ban on the acquisition of assets of strategic economic importance or strategic defensive importance to Australia".

I consider these bills, the Foreign Investment Reform (Protecting Australia's National Security) Bill 2020 and the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Fees Imposition Amendment Bill 2020, good bills. In this country 235 years ago, Australians heard about some people—'whitefellas', we called them—coming here. They gave us beads and trinkets and blankets, and we thought they were a pretty good outfit and it was pretty good to let them in. But the outcome for we First Australians was not very good—not very good indeed—and I think we all know that and admit that. The life expectancy in parts of Cape York is 40 per cent lower than in the rest of Australia. In the Torres Strait it is 20 years fewer than other Australians, just to quote but one figure—and we won't go into the ugliness of what took place, but it wasn't a real good idea. As a gentleman in England, called Mr Winston Churchill, said: 'If you do not learn from history, then you are doomed to have that history reimposed upon you.' It might be nice if some people in this place listened to that gentleman.

At the time of talking, 40 per cent of Australia's electricity industry is owned by China. What country on earth would allow that for 40 per cent of its most essential service? Without electric pumps you can't get a drop of water to drink unless you're going to take a bucket down to the river, and too bad for those of us who don't have a river with water in it, I suppose! What sort of a country would allow that to happen? It's worse than that because if I add in the 15 per cent of Australia's electricity that comes from solar panels—well, the solar panels come from China. So you can take out another 20 per cent and add it to that 40 per cent. We now have 60 per cent. Then if you take out Queensland—because Queensland is still owned by a corporation which the government still owns at this stage, albeit tenuously—China owns 70 per cent of our electricity supply. What sort of a country are we? Are we Australians in this place?

History will not record that Australians were in this parliament when the country was sold out. As far as agricultural lands go, the biggest agricultural operation in Australia is Van Diemen's dairies—owned by China. The second biggest is Cubbie Station—owned by China. The third biggest is the AACo—owned by foreigners. The fourth biggest is Consolidated—owned by China, or Chinese intermediaries. The fifth biggest is Kidman. I'll leave it to somebody else to argue who owns Kidman's. I could go on, but those are the biggest farming operations in this country. Bigger than all of them put together will be the Ord stage 2 and 3. A minister in the Liberal government handed over stage 2 and stage 3. I use the words 'handed over' because 31 Australians applied for that water and they were all knocked back. It was given to China.

The only development project in the north-western third of the land area of this country—right in the heart of it—was given to China. The only deepwater port in the northern half of this country is Darwin—and it was sold. If ever there were a Judas Iscariot act—a minister in the LNP government sold the port of Darwin to China. It's the only deepwater port in northern Australia. Whilst the media are out there screaming about all these ports in the South Pacific being taken up by China, this government gave that port to China. It demonstrates the underlying corruption that's at the University of Queensland and in this place. That gentleman walked out of this place being paid $900,000 a year plus his ministerial superannuation salary of $300,000 a year. He walked out with close to $1.2 million. Let me say that the 30 pieces of silver has inflated! Since the time of Judas Iscariot, there's been an inflationary pressure. A cabinet minister in this place is the modern-day equivalent.

Let me return for a moment to ownership of our essential services. Obviously water and sewerage are the two most essential services. All of our water pumps and sewerage pumps are made in China. They break down regularly and continuously. You can't just go and buy a giant water pump the size of a person's bathroom—maybe four times the size. You can't buy them off the shelf. They have to be poured, foundered, in a foundry in China. If something breaks down, then you're at the mercy of China. I'm just wondering what aspect of Australian life is not at the mercy of China.

To underline the set of values that are exemplified by this place, the First Australians owned most of Cape York Peninsula and a fair proportion of the top of Western Australia. When we say 'own', well, they own it, except to quote the Western Australia state member representing northern Western Australia: 'Yes, we own it, except we're not allowed to break a twig on it. We're not allowed to take a rock off it. We're not allowed to take a glass of water out of the billabongs. Apart from that, we own it.' Well, of course, what she's saying is absolutely correct.

The collective laws of Australia make it impossible for them to ever use that land, and, in any event, they can't get a title deed to it. They have some sort of Mickey Mouse arrangement called tribal lands, and the governments of Australia—state, mainly, and federal—have this wonderful handover ceremony where they hand over a million acres to some tribal grouping. When they find out it's worth something, that tribal grouping will be dumped because someone stacks the next meeting. But, quite apart from that primitive mechanism, Europe gave up tribal ownership 2,500 years ago; the Asians gave it up 3,000 years ago. Yet we impose that upon First Australians. We give them a draught horse and ask them to compete on the world market in agriculture using a draught horse instead of a modern-day tractor.

Every single country in the world provides title deeds. There is a wonderful book out. There's great controversy, because the author didn't get a Nobel Prize and he should have got one—that's Hernando de Soto, an economist with the World Bank. He said the reason that Peru, the Philippines and Egypt are the poorest countries on earth is that they can't get a title deed. It takes on average seven years with around 270 legal processes to go through to get a title deed. Even if our poor First Australians had that, there is still no ultimate title deed. If you manage to jump through 400 hoops and you're still alive after you jump through them, you get a Mickey Mouse arrangement called a 99-year lease with all sorts of restrictive terms upon it. So we can't give a title deed out. It's not very difficult.

When I was the minister, my blackfella mates said: 'This is what we want. We want a piece of paper—a title deed; the same as everyone else in the world. We want to own our own house—the same as the people in Cairns, Mareeba and Darwin own their house. We want the same thing.' Righto, mate. You can have it. We draft the forms, have them printed and put them into every council chamber. They walk into the local council—a blackfella council, not a whitefella council—take the form and fill it out. If the council doesn't object to it through meetings, you get a title deed—a freehold title—and ownership as strong as any person on earth enjoys. You've got freehold, fee simple, title with one exception. There's a clause in it that says you can't sell it to outsiders, so whitefellas can't come in and buy the whole place up and it ends up being a whitefella place instead of blackfella place. That was very, very bright of those people who developed that proposal and put that clause in.

In subsequent reading, I found out that in America they didn't put that clause in in the American reservations. Within 29 years, all the reservations were gone. A bloke wanted to buy a team of horses. He might want to buy a sulky. He might want to set up a business in the town and he borrows money. He can't repay it, so the bank forecloses on his land and they ended up with no Red Indian reserves at all.

This is about stopping foreigners from owning our country. And I think if we did a proper analysis of the ownership of the landmass of Australia—I was told at Mildura that you can drive for 37 kilometres and never set foot on a single kilometre of land that is owned by an Australian. And I heard the CEO from down there skiting that he'd been responsible for selling all those places to China and now it's working marvellously well. Ha! Well, I'll leave it to the Mildura people to figure out whether it's working marvellously well or not! But, whether you're in Mildura, whether you're in the Gulf of Carpentaria or whether you're in the central desert, figure out and have a look at who actually owns the land, and then figure out how much land we Australians own.

Fifty-two cent of Australia is on the world register of deserts. So, if you take 52 per cent out and then you take 23 per cent out, which is supposed to be owned by we First Australians—of course, we own absolutely nothing; we're told we own it, like little children, like we wouldn't really understand what ownership means—that's 85 per cent gone. Of the remaining 15 per cent, how much is owned by Australians and how much is owned by foreign countries?

I didn't pick the fight with China, and I'm not standing foursquare behind our Prime Minister on this issue. But the fact is there is a fight going on, and you people gave them ownership of your electricity, control of your water supply and sewerage supply and ownership of your land. So, in the history books, when we recall who was responsible for selling this country out, then you better look in the mirror, you people that are sitting in here. But I tell you what: Andrew Wilkie and I, we don't have to look in the mirror. We don't have to look in the mirror, because we're moving this amendment.

Before I conclude, I just want to put a picture in, because 23 per cent of that Australia can be brought back into Australian hands in the First Australian reserves if you give those people title deeds. We will be forthcoming with title deed applications to this place, and I am getting very worried that the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs is so far refusing to meet with me. I warn him: let him do so at his peril, because when he visits First Australian communities in Queensland he won't be greeted as an honoured guest. I'll tell you what'll happen to him—no, I'm not going to tell you what will happen to him. But he has been given the opportunity to become an historic figure in this nation. For the first time, since the Queensland government fell in 1990, First Australians will be able to own their own land in freehold, fee simple, title. We have a choice of doing that, or continuing to sell it out to China. (Time expired)

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