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

Yes. With all due respect, Deputy Speaker Buchholz, I most certainly wouldn't accuse you of these shortcomings, but it is playing big on my mind that the cassowary is going to be no more. The cassowary bird is actually the crest for most of our local government areas in Far North Queensland.

Now with respect to crocodiles, I don't know whether these things are true, but people that know a lot more than I do and that live in these areas and know all about it are saying that crocodiles have eaten all the gropers. The gropers used to eat the starfish. The starfish numbers are now exploding on the reef and destroying the Great Barrier Reef. If you start fooling around with nature, you really want to know where it will end up. You've got to think. It's not simple; it's complicated.

There are 23,000 square kilometres of natural grasslands—Mitchell and Flinders grasses—in the natural grasslands in North Queensland that have vanished under the prickly acacia tree, which was brought in to provide stock feed. Actually it only has leaves on it for about three months of the year, but I'm not blaming the greenies or anyone for that one. That was the scientists' stupidity and ignorance.

We've got 23,000 square kilometres where all native flora and fauna has been destroyed by prickly acacia tree. We've got the jungles where the pigs have taken over, and there's nothing being done about the pigs. When I say that—they are setting traps. How would you set traps for three million pigs? Honestly! But, if you let in the hoon class—of which I was a member when I was a young bloke—with our dogs and our guns, we'll take out the pigs for you. And we won't shoot other things. There's an assumption that because we own a gun—but we're the people that love nature. That's why we've got a gun. We go out there in nature and we live with nature as we have done for 40,000 years. You don't come up here and tell that to my brother-cousins. I most certainly am related to a lot of First Australian families. I might have some in the family tree—I don't know. But you don't come here and tell us what we're going to do or not do after we've been doing it for 40,000 years. You come here and tell us that our kids are going to be eaten by crocodiles, when we used to take the crocodile eggs as part of our feed. But, there again, you took out the biggest predator of crocodiles—humans. They took the crocodile eggs. You also took out the dingoes, who took crocodile eggs, and goannas, because you brought in a bug, and then to get rid of the bug you had to bring in the toads. You started fooling around with nature, you don't know what you're doing, and the results have been absolutely catastrophic. (Time expired)

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