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

We've had yet another tragedy—a shark taking a human being. I've said in this House before and I'm going to say again that there was a very nice, very popular young doctor with his wife and his two kids having a good time as tourists in North Queensland and the doctor's wife and his two children watched in horror as a crocodile chewed him in half. Every single person in this place who voted for the protection of crocodiles can take that on their conscience. Because I'm a Christian, you can explain it to Jesus Christ when you get up to heaven that you voted that that could happen again and again. Don't quote to me the figures of how many people are taken by crocodiles, because that's how many you see taken by crocodiles. They don't usually take them when other people are around. So you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what you're doing. There's incredible damage behind the fascist-like arrogance of the wokies and the various other greenie classes that come into this place. They don't know the damage that they are doing to my homeland.

I will have on my conscience the vanishing of the cassowaries in North Queensland. That will be on my conscience. I love the cassowaries. They're part of our homeland. It is actually, according to most of the local authority, a question of arms. They will not be there because they banned the shooters from going into national parks. Half of the area of North Queensland has national parks, and they say that we can't go in there with rifles. Well, who is going to go in there and shoot the massive explosion of pigs in that area? They've got nothing to eat in the jungle except cassowary eggs. So goodbye cassowaries. They've got nothing to eat except turtle eggs on the beach. So goodbye turtles. That's because of your criminal stupidity and ignorance. You've got shoes that have never set foot off a concrete pavement and you're telling people that have lived up there for 40,000 years what they can and can't do. I'll tell you what: they're pretty hostile towards you. I don't recommend that you go up there, because the hostility levels now are getting very, very bad.

The cassowary is doomed. It's going to be on my watch. To my fury and rage, it'll be on my watch that that beautiful bird and part of our nature wonderland will vanish because of your criminal stupidity. Unless the boys are allowed in and licensed—I absolutely believe they should be licensed with their guns and their big dogs—you will never eradicate those pigs. I'm told that a pig mother has 12 babies a year. You can imagine what the population of Canberra would be if every woman here had 12 babies a year.

I want to move away from the fascist-like arrogance and fairytale land of the greenies and the wokies, and the Liberals and Labor, that go down the same pathway. I want to go sideways for a moment. There would not be a person in this House who hasn't eaten fish and chips, right? So you're responsible for the destruction of sea life. I'll tell you what: if you take the chooks away and the seafood away and the beef away, then you're going to starve to bloody death, like a lot of people on this planet.

A thousand million people go to bed every night hungry. I'll tell you a way to cure that. It's to increase the amount of food coming out of Australia. Well, I've got news for you. It's decreasing. We had 371 million sheep; we've now got three million sheep. The sheep are gone. Cattle numbers were 25 to 30 million back in the seventies and eighties—they're still 25! What's going on out there? Nothing! You have a responsibility to nobody! A thousand million people go to bed hungry every night and you have no responsibility to feed them. Well, I'll tell you what. We had that attitude—we Australians—250 years ago. It was such a bad attitude that, except for the Christian missionaries, we would have been annihilated. My mob, the black fellas of Australia, would have been annihilated—none of us would be here if it weren't for the Christian missionaries. Because we had an attitude, we didn't have to have an army, we didn't have to have a population, we didn't have to have development, we didn't have to interface with the rest of the world—yes, well, we nearly vanished off the face of the earth. God bless the Christian missionaries. They protected us.

There is survival of the species. Obviously no-one in here has read Charles Darwin on survival of the species. But those countries that will operate and have sensible attitudes will survive, and the moronic fairytale land which is being imposed upon us by a fascist mentality—and I use that word with a forethought; as a published author, I am allowed to use that with a forethought—and the fascist arrogance and fairytale land of this place is going to take away our cassowaries. They're going to take away our North Queensland turtles. You, whose shoe leather has never set foot off a concrete pavement, are telling us how nature should operate in North Queensland!

Now I sit in my office and have a picture facing me. Other people can't see it, but I can. It's a picture of the cassowary overpass—$42 million was spent building a cassowary overpass. The mountain and jungle come down here, and then there's the highway there, and then there's an 80-foot fall down the slope. The mountain doesn't just stop on the highway; it keeps going down. So they built the cassowary walkway on top of the highway, and it goes straight down. So if the cassowary walked on the cassowary highway, it would plunge 80 feet to its death, because no-one told them in Brisbane and Canberra, those fascist morons, that a cassowary has no wings. It can't fly! So, if it ever uses your $42 million bridge, then it will die. The law is done. It's guaranteed that the cassowary is going to get killed. It's a wonderful metaphor for what is taking place here.

To live with nature, you really need to know what you are doing. The shark attack this week shows again that you don't know what you are doing. If you had fish and chips in your lifetime, chances are that part of that fish would be shark meat. You think it's a good idea that sharks can eat us, but you don't think it's a good idea that we can eat them? I mean, it's rather a quaint notion that you have. But I have loved my North Queensland. I love water skiing. I can't do that anymore because the crocodile danger now is such that no-one can water ski in our rivers in North Queensland. You've taken our fun away from us.

I went scuba diving in my youth, and it was one of the most enjoyable things that I've ever done. But now, for reasons I don't fully understand—we're working on that now—there has been an explosion in shark numbers. Then, in any event, I carried a spear gun with me, and, if a shark came near me, I could protect myself. Now, if I did that, I'd be breaking the law in Queensland. It is one of the very few places on earth where killing a shark is illegal.

Those people who run Queensland live in Brisbane. So they're 3,000 kilometres away, effectively, from the heart of North Queensland, and they're running things for us. They're running things so dreadfully that we're going to lose the cassowaries. There's the explosion in crocodile numbers. People tell me that the groper are gone, because the crocodiles are eating the gropers, and the gropers ate the crown-of-thorns starfish which are now exploding on the Barrier Reef and destroying the Barrier Reef.

When you start messing around with nature, you don't know what you're doing. You brought in a beetle to solve some sort of disease that got into sugar cane, and the beetle exploded and caused enormous problems. Then you brought the toads in to get rid of the beetles. Now we have no dingoes and we have no goannas, because they've eaten the toads and they've died out. So the destruction that your ignorance and fascist arrogance has imposed upon us is appalling, and you will pay for it—if not in this life, then most certainly in the next. I'm a Christian.

See this speech in context