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

I'm speaking on the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2025. I would like to quote two people—one is one of the soldiers that has seen the most active warfare than any other soldier in Australian history, probably, and the other one is a very close friend of mine, a Cloncurry boy, whose best friend was one of my best friends. To the soldier with great experience, I said, 'What do you think about the new rifles and the light calibre of the bullet?' He said, 'It stinks.' I said, 'Why?' He said: 'When you squeeze the trigger, I want the bloke dead. The idea that it will only wound him and will take three men out of the front line—in warfare, that is not how anyone looks at it. When I squeeze the trigger, I want him dead.'

Now, the last head of the armed forces is reputed to have given orders that they were not to use the word 'kill'. This person has spent $40,000 million buying patrol boats that have no ordinance. They can't kill anybody. Well, what is the bloody use of having them? They're supposed to be our front line of defence and they can't kill anyone! They've got a machine gun! So we spent $40,000 million buying 15 machine guns.

My platoon—in two wars, we were on 24-hour call-up to fight in Borneo and, later, in Vietnam—had 23 machine guns amongst the 32 of us, and he spent $40,000 million buying 15 machine guns. The man should have been jailed. And he issued instructions that they are not to use the word 'kill'.

Well, I tell you, I was a weapons instructor for about 11 years of my life, as most of us were at my age. I was born in 1945, the year the war ended. Obviously, no-one was going to be doing bayonet charges in the sixties or seventies. That was not going to happen, so why were we doing bayonet drills? You charged and you let out a bloodcurdling scream and you plunged your bayonet into the dummy and you screamed out 'en garde!' and then charged the next dummy. What was all that about? It was about training people to kill without thinking. That goes back to my good friend—the soldier whose probably seen more combat than anyone else in Australian history. He said it's about killing people; don't have any illusions about this. It's interesting that America calls them armed forces. We call them defence forces. That is a very interesting comment.

The second person I want to quote is a very good friend of mine from my home town of Cloncurry. His mutual friend was one of my closest friends. He'd come back from Vietnam, he came to see me and he said, 'Robbie, I was in the unit that was responsible for the so-called massacre.' I felt so sorry for the blokes that went to Vietnam. It was a terrifying experience and I don't think any of them came back the way they were before they went there. He said, 'Our commander, our lieutenant, said that there are VC coming down the track'—Vietcong—'and he said, "When I fire, you will all fire, you hear me?" and the 23 of us nodded our heads.' Then he said, 'Anyway, coming down the track were some women and young people and he started firing.' He said, 'I was on a GPMG'—a machine gun—'so I started firing.' He said: 'Robbie, they were women and children that we killed. But I swear to you that they were carrying ordinance.'

Are you people in this place going to judge these people that have to make those sorts of decisions in a fraction of a second about whether they're going to die or not or whether they're going to let down their platoon and have their platoon wiped out? You're going to judge them? What the hell would you know about it? You've never been near a firearm in your life, most of you, apart from any other consideration. There are people here talking about how wonderful our defence forces are. What a joke! A flotilla of Chinese warships circled Australia and, I don't know about other people, but it had a very bad psychological effect upon me. I felt like I was on the side of the road in a road accident with the kites and hawks circling around overhead.

We didn't even have warships that could've tracked them. They just sailed around Australia, letting us know that they were the bosses of the southern Pacific and we were nobody and nothing, and we're here at their pleasure or displeasure. You say America—well America happens to be about 4,000 or 5,000 kilometres away from Australia, and I didn't notice any Americans around at Kokoda or at Milne Bay. In fact I didn't notice any Americans there at all when our country was about to be invaded. My own father was sitting behind a machine gun outside of Brisbane. He wouldn't have been very happy if he'd known that the government of Australia had already given northern Australia to the enemy—the decision had already been made.

If you want to be serious, then clearly you have to have a fortress wall. Ever since man has been man, he has had a palisade—maybe thorn bushes, maybe fire. He's got a fire in the cave where he's living. We have had a protective wall of some description around us. Obviously, in days past, that was a huge construction that was very, very high, which people had to breach if they wanted to take the city. The modern fortress wall, clearly, is the missile umbrella that is over Israel, given to them by the Americans. We have a coastline that precludes us from that approach, but, if we have 80 vessels—I'd call them defence forces, because we don't actually have a vessel of this type. It's a bit bigger than a patrol boat, but able to carry missiles and interception capacity and interception of drone capacity. If we've got 80 of them—maybe 40 in Darwin and 40 at Cairns or Townsville—then you come sailing around our waters, we'll say hello to you and it won't be a very friendly hello. We'll now be stalking you; it won't be you stalking us. You say, 'What can we do against a country the size of China?' Well, China had better make the best of it, because in 25 or 30 years, the vast bulk of the population will be over 70 or under 13. They better make hay while the sun shines, I say to them.

I spoke to one of the leading people in the Australian Army about Ukraine. Obviously, my electorate goes into Townsville. I said, 'What's your take on Ukraine?' They said, 'It's very interesting, isn't it? It's not about rockets or missiles, as everyone thought it would be.' They're too expensive apparently, but they're hurling 10,000 mortar bombs at each other every day. Where are our mortar bombs? I doubt we have 150 or 200 mortar bombs. We probably need about 2,000.

The other interesting thing—and I hate to say this because I have very great respect and very great admiration for John Howard, and it wasn't entirely his decision. I'm not going to go into what happened. I was still in the party room at that stage. There were two million or three million rifles in Australia that were taken off us, so we could not defend our homes. I will add the largest number of signatures ever collected in Queensland history were on castle law: your right to defend your own home. There were 130,000 signatures by the time period closed. It was the highest ever recorded in Queensland history. Those people want the right to protect their home. You can try defending your home with a cricket bat if you want, but I know what I would need to defend my home.

You say, 'Oh, what will happen if everyone has a rifle?' Lady, I was brought up most of my life when everyone did have a rifle in this country. I'll give you one statistic that wipes out your arguments. When Queensland had no gun laws at all, I went to buy a pair of socks, and they had AK-47 rifles for sale, so I bought an AK-47 rifle and 350 rounds of ammunition instead of buying my socks. There were no gun laws at all in Queensland, and there were eight deaths with guns. Just remember that figure. In the same year, in New South Wales, with its Draconian gun laws, there were 36 deaths with guns. With fierce Draconian anti-gun laws in Victoria they had 54 deaths with guns. If you think that's an isolated phenomenon, check the deaths with guns in Switzerland, Sweden and Finland where every home has a gun. Check the figures.

East Germany had the highest death rate with guns in Europe, and guns were banned in East Germany. The neighbouring country Switzerland, where every single home had a gun, had the lowest death rate with guns in Europe. In America, North Dakota and South Dakota have the highest gun ownership in the world, and there were two deaths with guns in three years. Places where there are very restrictive gun laws—guess where the highest death rate with guns were? They were Chicago, Washington DC and California, the capital city.

I am not keen to rob a house if I think that house might have a gun in it. I think I'll raid that house and not this house. But every house in Australia now has a sign on it saying, 'You're quite safe to rob this house.' Not only do we not have castle law, the right to defend ourselves in our own homes; we don't have the wherewithal to defend ourselves in our own home. You say, 'Oh, the police will look after you.' Well, the down time in Queensland is about 40 minutes, so I think it will be all over red rover by the time the police arrive. So don't even think about that one.

Once upon a time, my country, Australia, believed in the right of the individual, not the government. This bill is the complete opposite. It takes away the rights of the individual and says, 'We people sitting in our ivory towers, in our plush, air conditioned rooms, here in Canberra will pass judgement on men that are out there risking their lives for this country.' Young men are risking their lives for this country. They're on bivouac and they're marching 40 kilometres a day with a 40-pound pack on their backs. They're not even in combat, but they're doing it for their country. It amazes me that the young people in the Army, and a lot of them are in the Kennedy electorate, do it for patriotic reasons. You sit down at the pub with them, listening to them. It's amazing how many of them actually do it out of patriotism, believe it or not.

Here we are today, taking away the rights of the individual and taking away our right to protect our country, and now we have a Star Chamber. For those of us who have had legal training—I was in the final year of law at the toughest law school in Australia, with a 72 per cent dropout rate, so, when it comes to the law, I know what I'm talking about. We have a Star Chamber here. The Star Chamber is notorious in English history. There was a period under one of the totalitarian kings in England when they could simply pass judgement upon you in closed shop. No-one knew what was going on, and they could pass any judgement on you they liked. They were not bound by the rule of law.

Do you want to know the difference between a civilised country and an uncivilised country? The country that has democracy, rule of law, industrial awards and Christianity—I make no apologies for saying that—are the civilised countries. As far as I'm concerned, people that come from countries that don't have those four things should not be coming into our country. I feel very, very fearful of what is going on with immigration. Whether that undermines the security of our country, I won't address today— (Time expired)

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