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

I would like another couple of minutes, Mr Chairman. In the Torres Straits, life expectancy is 20 years lower than it is in the rest of Australia. The state Labor government—but the Liberals have been doing exactly the same thing, so I don't want to pick them out for that reason—will not give up the figures for the First Australian mainland communities, but I got them, sneakily, for one community. Life expectancy in this community, which is quite a substantial sized community in Cape York and the Gulf—I won't mention the name—is 43 for males and 51 for females. The figures for Australians in the rest of Australia is 81 and 83. Surely, you people must feel ashamed. Don't you feel ashamed that this is the way that you are treating the First Australians? You pass your laws to suppress the symptoms or to look after the barrier reef or because some diseases will come in or because of some other issue, but you don't take into account that we're literally starving to death, dying from malnutrition. Nearly a thousand people a year are dying in the Gulf, Cape York and the Torres Strait as a result of the actions and inaction of the government in this place. The people of Australia gave us the power, through the referendum, to act, and we're not acting.

You cannot own a piece of land. There is no machinery by which a First Australian can own a block of land. Well, yes, there is. Last year they instituted it. I go up there and I'm deeply embarrassed because people put both their hands on my hand and they say, 'I have a cattle lease.' Now, I want to put on the record that I had nothing to do with that. I asked the people what they wanted. Surprise, surprise—they wanted to own their own house, their own farm, their own pharmacy. A lot of their kids who have been at university come home and open up a pharmacy, a service station or whatever. But if you can't get a piece of land and a title deed, you can't borrow money from the bank and you have nothing.

The ban on alcohol means none of them have blue cards, so they can't get government jobs. Is it any wonder that they're starving to death? I was promised market gardens 17 months ago and there still isn't even a contract to put a market garden in anywhere. They were removed by the government that came in after we were defeated in 1990. Proudly, I say we kept the market gardens going for the 35 years that we were in office in Queensland.

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