House debates Matters of Public Importance
Social Cohesion
Bob Katter Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party
4:05 pm
I'm definitely out of step with people in this place. My reaction when I heard this—I just can't get what happened to her out of my head—was entirely different. All I could think of was getting at that b— in that car and kicking him to death in the street, right? Kicking him to death may be a little bit extreme, but it's my rage and anger against that person. I am sick and tired, again and again, of hearing exculpatory explanations for behaviour. Scott Morrison had it dead right in that dreadful case where the person killed his three kids. He said this is not about exculpatory explanations for their behaviour or analysing how he got to this point. It is simply about good and evil, and, if our society has lost something of enormous value, it is our Christianity. I don't mean going to church on Sunday. That's not what I'm talking about. You have an inbuilt sense of good and evil. This is evil. The murder of those three children was evil. Don't talk to me about explanations for their behaviour or analysing what forces were at work here.
Once you move away from that good and evil and go into the area—and I make no apologies for saying this—that people have been going to in this place, then you are in desperately bad trouble. I am entitled to my rage and my sense of violence against the person that did this. I don't care about your exculpatory explanations. I'm not interested in that. This bloke tried to kill a friend of mine—another person, but in this case a friend of mine—and I know what my reaction would have been if I'd been there at the time. I say this with rage and anger. If you think you can make people good and if you say there is a rising sense of violence, the first time I set foot in this chamber was up there in the gallery. I was visiting my father. I thought I'd just look in on it. Jim Cairns left the front bench and ran around to bash Billy Wentworth, and three people were needed to restrain him from bashing Billy Wentworth. Don't say violence is new. In the state parliament on three occasions there were brawls. In one brawl I thought that McPhie had killed the bloke, and he thought he had as well! He played front row for Australia, and he was down giving him resuscitation because he thought he killed him as well. But the other bloke threw the punch. Violence from where I come from is not new at all. In fact, these days it's very, very peaceful compared with Jim Cairns racing across the chamber trying to bash Billy Wentworth. 'Hello to federal parliament, Bobby Katter!'
I want to return to the good and evil. Scott Morrison, if he did nothing else, was dead right. This is not about explanations as to why he behaved this way. This is about good and evil. The person that murdered his three kids is evil, right? Unless we have this right and wrong, evil and good—and Helen was an excellent example of good. I'm not talking about religion here or anything of that nature. There are some people that are Christian in the general sense of the word. They work hard for other people and they're prepared to sacrifice themselves for other people. The person that did that—I'm just different from other people. I mean, it wouldn't have been good for me to have been there, I suppose, if I'd witnessed it.
When we ask, 'how do we overcome these problems?' let it be known that, if you do something like this, then we will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Let's have you understand that—and then you might be able to stop doing what you're doing. (Time expired)
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