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

I was very controversially appointed the minister for what was then called Aboriginal affairs in Queensland. I had a fairly radical reputation. As one of the more radical people in parliament, I was given the task of bringing forward the most radical of legislation to the most conservative of parliaments in Australia. In fact, I think a lot of people would describe the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government as 'archconservative'.

To speak about Alfie Neal, you have to put it in a political context. I wrote a moderately best-selling history book, and I have a very unique position in so far as I come from a town called Cloncurry, which is one of the very few conventional towns in Australia where the predominant ethos is First Australian. We refer to ourselves as a 'Murray from the Curry', and that's pretty true. Some racist people used to put on the reservoir coming into Cloncurry 'Coon Curry'. My father used to explode during a rage, because that's a denigrating term, but the fact is that it was the predominant paradigm of my hometown.

It's a very interesting town, because the Kalkadoon Wars—if you're talking about tribes, you're taking an English or Scottish concept and applying it to an Australian situation, and it just didn't work like that. I'm not going to go into the details of that, but there is no doubt that the word Kalkadoon referred to all the First Australian peoples that occupied the land between Cloncurry and Mount Isa, right up to the Gulf Country, including Mornington Island. There is no doubt in my mind about that, and I can speak with great authority, because I lived in the bush with my partner—not my partner in the modern sense of the word—my mining partner. We were fifty-fifty in our mining operations, and he was always referred to as the last of the Kalkadoons. His mother is one of the very few piccaninny survivors from the big battle on Battle Range, which is in all the great history books. So I have a unique vantage point.

In my book, I didn't want to portray us as losers. I wanted to portray us as winners. There was great violence in that area, and you can't speak about Alfie Neal without talking about this. The great violence is clear. Just look at a map and the names of the creeks—Spear Creek, Police Creek, Massacre Creek, Gunpowder Creek. I mean, you wouldn't need a lot of imagination as to what was going on there, and the fighting went on and on for 40 years. White fellows killing black fellas, black fellas killing white fellas. Ironically enough, it ended up about even. Over a hundred people on both sides died in the Kalkadoon Wars. You can say, in the end, your mob lost, the Kalkadoons lost. Well, hold on a minute. There are only a few thousand of us and we got three million acres in above 24-inch rainfall area. I don't know that we lost at all. I would say that we may well have come out on top.

We went through a period of warfare, and then came the second period. The determination to obliterate the First Australians is real. Australians may not like it, but it's real. Then, in came the much-maligned Christians—the people who abolished slavery, abolished communism, created the Renaissance, people called Christians. They came in and they protected us. They gave us huge areas of land. They reserved for us over three million acres in the peninsula alone, and they said, 'You white fellas are not coming in here shooting black fellas. That's over.' That was the Christianity period, but, at the same time, they said to my mob, the Kalkadoons, 'It was for our protection'. I just can't believe how many times I hear the phrase, 'We're doing it for you.' We don't want you to do it for us! We just want you whitefellas to go away, please. Just go away! We don't want you to look after us. I'll tell you how you looked after us. You put us in chains, the Kalkadoons, and sent us off to a penal colony called Palm Island. I haven't got time, but I think every Australian and every schoolchild should read Under the Act, which were the laws in Queensland. It was probably worse than a penal colony, places like Palm Island, where my mob were sent in chains for our protection. They were protecting us! That's an interesting way to protect people!

In 1957, the incoming Country Party—the farmers party, if you like—abolished the act, the pernicious, dreadful, appalling, discriminatory and oppressive act. It was abolished in 1957-58. But we then went into a period of paternalism. When I was appointed minister—and this is where Alfie Neal comes into the story—I first went to Yarrabah, outside of Cairns, the biggest First Australian community in Australia, with 4½ thousand First Australian people. I was taken around by the departmental officials. I spoke to all of the people that were in positions of importance that were running the Yarrabah community. Of the 28, 26 were whitefellas, not blackfellas. This is where Alfie Neal comes in. I thought: 'This is wrong. I think anyone that ascribes to Christianity would say this is wrong, as would anyone that believes in the American Declaration of Independence, the British Bill of Rights or the French declaration of independence—that all men are born free and equal.'

That was not the case in Queensland. Even though the act had been abolished, we had a situation where all of the money coming into the community was to public servants or for the dole or some sort of social benefit. So you had to cash a cheque from the government. Of course, if you got offside with the whitefella administration, they didn't cash your cheques. I would say that, at every single one of the 28 communities in Queensland, when I visited them, someone would come up and say, 'What about cashing the cheques?' I couldn't get a handle on what they were talking about. They used that as a form of control. I realised that we had to get out of this. I thought: 'Why improve it? Why not just go to where we should be, which is self-management? Let the people go back to running their own affairs and having the power to run their own affairs. No state government, no federal government.'

It has to come from the people themselves. There's a great scene in the movie Burn! where Marlon Brando cuts the rebel leader free and says, 'Run away! They're going to kill you. Run away! You'll be free.' He says: 'No, if my freedom depends upon you cutting that rope, I'm not free,' and he sat there and waited for his execution the next morning. Good call! Great call! You are not free unless you yourself seize that power. That's Alfie Neal. One person in 4,000 said, 'We run our own affairs, not you whitefellas.' A great leader of the Torres Strait.

I've only met seven truly great people in my life. The first name I would mention would be George Mye, a very deeply committed Christian. Every aspect of his life was run by his Christianity—love your fellow man and work hard to make the world a better place—and he did so with very great courage. There are only two others: Tommy Geia at Palm Island, a descendant of the bloke that wrote the great book Under the Act; and Alfie Neal—which brings me to the subject today, Alfie Neal. A very big family. Alfie didn't hate people. He didn't hate the Uncle Toms; the coconuts. He didn't hate them. He didn't hate whitefellas. He didn't hate being black. But he stood up. I had no power at all, but three great leaders stood up. There was no doubt that every one of the 4½ thousand people at Yarrabah would follow Alf. When he stood up, Tom Geia stood up on Palm Island, which is the second-biggest community in Australia, with 2,000 people. George Mye, representing the Torres Strait— (Time expired)

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned.