Bob Katter
Kennedy · Katter's Australian Party · Australia
“My question is to the Treasurer. Mr Treasurer, some 900,000 student visa holders are now living in Australia. The number of temporary visa holders is increasing at one million a year. Clearly, within 10 or 13 years, the people who are not born in Australia will outnumber the people born in Australia. Treasurer—the cost.”
“We have a redistribution going through in Queensland. I have seen some disgraceful performances in my life, but the Premier of Queensland has excelled himself. The member for Mount Isa is expected to look after Malanda and Millaa Millaa, which is the best part of three days drive in a car.”
“Now for anyone who is the Premier of Queensland and has nothing better to do with his time than run around trying to rub out a tiny little party with two or three members in the parliament, I mean, there's got to be something seriously wrong with that Premier of Queensland—but we'll deal with him in due course.”
“Health Minister, the Life-saving List campaigners have taken Australia's bone marrow donor registry from 168,000 to nearly 190,000. Three years ago, you said Australia had not moved fast enough to help blood cancer patients find donors and promised action to grow the registry.”
“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.”
“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.”
The complete record
Every one of 161 lines we hold for Bob Katter, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 4.
“But I cannot think about little Matilda dying so tragically without thinking of the worst people, maybe, the planet has ever seen, the Nazis—or the Russians, with their pogroms against the Jews. Most of Israel were actually Jewish people fleeing from Russia and the continuous persecution that has taken place there. Now, I don't know why people have this thing called 'antisemitism', but I know that, like Nazism and communism, it is a cancer. It is a cancer upon the soul of any country—wherever it is. As for me, I have a rage in my soul and it won't be quenched till we eradicate the basis upon which this attack occurred. People will talk about the gun debate. I watched the murder—I was sick at the time—on the television of 3,000 people in the Twin Towers. My automatic reaction was to reach out with my right hand.”
“Professor Wronski got the first medical school built in Australia in 42 years—there were two other people involved; he was one of three—and some 18 medical schools have walked through the door that he opened. He made the medical school to cater to people and to the community. It was inculcated in their graduates that they were there to create good happiness for the people. There are truly great people, and maybe there's something wonderful in that religion, the Jewish faith, which is, of course, our father religion, or our mother religion, for people that are Christians. We sometimes forget that Jesus Christ was a Jew—arguably, not just a Jew but a rabbi. It's the most illogical thing I could ever imagine—that people from supposedly Christian countries should be antisemetic.”
“And her name is now one of the names of the people that were murdered on this day and in this tragedy. A great tragedy should lead to a result that ensures, to the best of our ability, that it doesn't happen again, and we will be talking about that tomorrow. So I just wish for North Queensland—we don't have a lot of Jewish people in North Queensland, but two of them I know very well, the Kamslers. They and two other families created Cairns, which was a greasy little hot backwater. It became one of the tourist meccas and destinations of the world. So God bless the Kamsler family and what they did for Australia in North Queensland. They also fought extremely hard for First Australians—the only hotel in Cairns that employed First Australians—so they were people that fought not just for their own faith but for other people as well.”
“Both our blokes look after themselves pretty good, and they really enjoyed the physical fracas before they were dragged off by the police. But there should be a rage in our souls if you hate any group in society. Obviously, I run into this sometimes with our First Australian people. But going back to Matilda, 'Waltzing Matilda' is our national song, and I just wish more people knew the song 'Waltzing Matilda'. It was written in my hometown of Cloncurry. In my hometown, we created Qantas. We created the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Dame Mary Gilmore is buried in Cloncurry; she's on the $10 note. Matilda can't be a more Australian name. These people came to this country, they loved this country, and it gave them so much that they didn't have before, so they named their daughter Matilda.”
“My uncle was killed in a football game, and for the next 50 years of his life no-one could ever say my Uncle Norman's name in of my grandfather, because he'd just go off and vanish, lock a door and cease to be with us. Right until the day he died, no-one could mention Uncle Norman's name in front of my grandfather. Now, how infinitely worse the pain must be if your child is just 10 years of age. I have a rage in my soul, and it's very hard for me to talk nicely, because I just have this passionate rage. Some of these people were demonstrating outside of the Queensland parliament with their usual anti-Jewish hate. And two of our members of parliament from the party I belong to just couldn't bear it, and they ripped down their signs and got into a melee.”
“My question is to be Minister representing the Special Minister of State. An infamous evil in history—and I quote—devised his movement: 'Repeat a lie continuously, continually and constantly, and people will believe it's the truth even though it is a lie.' The LNP Townsville are obviously fellow travellers. The Hinchinbrook by-election has had the worst lying I've encountered in 25 years in politics, and that's saying a lot. The LNP said, 'We support castle law.' They've opposed its introduction three times. 'We're not going to abolish coal.' They've kept the coal tax, which will abolish coal. Three mineshave effectively closed. The LNP said KAP candidate Molachino had been for Labor. We have the text messages showing the LNP approached him as their first-choice candidate for Hinchinbrook.”
“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 exp ired)”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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'.”
“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.”
“I wonder whether people in this place ever did a history lesson in their lives. I asked the lady who was just speaking whether she'd ever planted a tree. In every single environmental meeting I have ever been to—”
“Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, over 25,000 square kilometres in north-west Queensland, Australia's cattle heartland, is now overrun by the prickly acacia weed tree. In contrast, buffel grass now covers vast tracts of what were once barren wastelands. Buffel is restoring riverbanks and deepening streams, many of which are now flowing again. Wouldn't you agree, then, with prominent Queenslander and AgForce president Shane McCarthy, a fifth-generation farmer, that only a government official cloistered in the Canberra kindergarten could ban buffel grass? For heaven's sake, Minister, will you put a stop to this urgently, otherwise won't you preside over a seven per cent drop in Australia's fifth-largest export industry, beef?”
“Proof positive of what he was saying there was the dismantling of the wind farm, which is no longer producing any electricity. It's worn out. They took the blades down and dumped them on Kidner's property without any permission. The company that did it vanished, so the Kidners couldn't sue anyone. It made national television. This is a beautiful area, a nature wonderland bordering on remnant jungles, very little of which are left on earth. These huge blades, which could stretch right across this room, were dumped there. (Time expired)”
“I second the motion. I greatly appreciate the honourable member for moving this legislation. The case of Chalumbin, which featured in a national magazine, the Spectator , was most notorious. The biggest wind farm in Australia was proposed to be put within a few hundred metres of some of the last remnant jungle on earth. There is very little jungle left on earth, and they were going to put this giant wind farm a few hundred metres from Chalumbin. We praised then Minister Plibersek from stopping that proposal from going ahead. The university professor who was leading the battle against Chalumbin had said, 'You've got to stand back and say, "What is happening here?"' What was happening was that a beautiful nature wonderland was being turned into an industrial wasteland.”
“Just to give you one example, the prickly acacia tree has taken over 25,000 square kilometres of beautiful natural grassland—all gone, all flora gone, all fauna gone—thanks to the likes of the people in this place who keep pressing this free-market syndrome and obsession. What other country has free markets? In sugar, our farmers were getting $270 for 10 to 12 years. America's farmers were getting $700, Europe's were getting $700, Thailand was on $470 and Brazil was on $420—and Australian farmers were getting $270. So, who's free marketing? It isn't Thailand. It isn't Brazil. It isn't the United States. It isn't Europe. Well, who the hell is free marketing out there? I will now turn over to my seconder and very able colleague.”
“We had citrus canker, white spot, papaya fruit fly, fire ants, varroa mites in honey, hendra virus—people died—and avian flu—people died. What the hell did we get out of it? You are paid to protect this country. If you saw the bloke in charge of the authority saying whether things can come into this country or can't, you would see an arrogant individual who is enjoying his power, knowing that it is to the detriment and at the expense of this nation—not only in terms of money but in terms of human death, the death of our economy and the death of nature. When you bring that product in from overseas it brings in bacteria and diseases. This was a country that never had farming, so we didn't have any of these diseases.”
“'The free marketeers have lowered the price of food in Australia by opening our doors to imports'—no, they haven't. The price of Woolworths and Coles has gone up 100 per cent in the last seven or eight years. That's the price of food in Australia. You not only did not succeed; you increased dramatically the price of food in Australia. You opened the doors, and what we have here is a gladiator. Send him into the ring. He says, 'Give me your shield and your helmet.' He says: 'Hey, wait on. The other bloke has got his shield and helmet.' 'Oh, no—it'll make you tougher if you fight without a shield and helmet.' The gladiator says, 'No, it'll make me dead.' I'll tell you how many dead gladiators are out there. Citrus canker cost this country $427 million. That's from letting products from overseas come into this country.”
“I move: That this House: (1) acknowledges that: (a) the Australian banana industry: (i) is worth $1.3 billion to the Australian economy and is the dominant employer in northern Australia; and (ii) represents more than 540 growers and employs over 15,000 people; (b) Australia, being a continent which until the 1800s had no farming, remains free of many of the world's most devastating vegetation diseases, including Moko, Black Sigatoka, and Banana Freckle; (c) these diseases are found throughout plantations in the Philippines causing widespread crop losses and often producing a flawed, largely inedible product; (d) these diseases will destroy Australia's banana industry and seriously damage our virgin, natural wonderland and threaten other food production activities; (e) the US Department of Labor, the Centre for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR), and the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER) have all found significant instances of poor work conditions in banana plantations across the Philippines, including widespread child labour; (f) the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is currently considering an application to import bananas from the Philippines, and has advised that it will only consider the risk of disease; and (g) bad enough in itself, the application does not consider the need for imports, the disparity in environmental conditions, chemical usage, wages and the various other factors that fail to make free trade, fair trade; and (2) calls on the Government to take immediate and decisive action to protect Australia's banana industry by ensuring that the: (a) application to import bananas from the Philippines is rejected, due to: (i) unacceptable biosecurity risks that will create real danger to not only Australia's banana industry but also to Australia's virgin nature wonderland as Philippine banana imports will be the vector of a myriad of diseases including Black Sigatoka, Moko Disease and Banana Freckle; (ii) the economic impact of decimating Australia's $1.3 billion banana industry, specifically considering the huge social and economic impact on communities where bananas are grown; (iii) the devastating environmental impacts of bananas grown in the Philippines that have vastly different chemical and pesticide usage and lower overall environmental standards; (iv) the difference in cost of production including wages and working conditions, for example, the average wage of $50 per week in the Philippines versus $1,153.30 per week in Australia; and (v) significant evidence of child labour throughout Philippine banana plantations, as reported by the US Department of Labor, CTUHR and EILER, with studies indicating that 22.5 per cent of households in banana growing regions have a child working in banana plantations; (b) Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry immediately reject the import application as there is no overriding need nor demand for the imported product; and (c) Government immediately introduce legislation that acknowledges our other international obligations including, but not restricted to, slavery, child labour and other unfair working conditions and wages, and environmental impacts including pesticide and chemical usage.”
“Let me move on. The Liberal leader wants live animal exports banned. When the cattle export industry was banned, the price dropped more than clean in half. There were a thousand Wandilla cows that went for a dollar a head. They'd been $200 a head the year before. We got the cattle market reopened, and I must put on the public record my praise for the Prime Minister—and I'd played a role in putting him back in there. Within nine days he was in Indonesia, because it wasn't just the live cattle decision; it was throwing dung beetles at our nearest neighbour, with one of the biggest populations on Earth— (Time expired)”
“So I called a press conference for 10 o'clock that morning, much to the screaming abuse of my staff because they said I was committing political suicide. I didn't think that I was, but, as it turned out, yes, I went from 72 per cent two-party preferred down to 52 per cent for what I did. But, in this place, surely you've got to do the right thing. Ted Theodore's picture is on my wall. He knew that he was destroying himself by saying, 'You have to spend money in a depression to work your way out of a depression.' He was torn to pieces and he was completely destroyed. He walked into his grave with his eyes open. That's probably why he's the greatest man in Australian history. I didn't say that; Malcolm Fraser said that. I didn't say that; Paul Keating said that. I disagree with those two blokes on just about everything but not on that.”
“Now, when live exports were banned by mistake—and I respect and I like Julia Gillard, the then prime minister, but she made a very bad mistake. She realised her mistake and, in fairness to her, two weeks later reversed the decision. Well, you don't go telling a country of nearly 300 million people, 'We'll give it to you now, we'll turn it off tomorrow and we'll turn it back on.' No, that does not happen. They quite rightly said, 'No, you turned the tap off and it will be left off.' I could clearly see that there were only two votes in this parliament. If I made a move—that was one of the two votes—I could get rid of Julia Gillard, which I hated to do because she's a very nice person, and put Kevin Rudd in her place.”
“They were living in small towns in Australia, their houses were worth nothing, they were bankrupted and a lot of them ended their lives in the most terrible way. Who was that attributable to? Totally the Labor Party and Paul Keating. There's the cattle industry. If you're in the Liberal Party or the National Party and you're saying, 'Yeah, the big bad ALP did that,' well, hold on a minute. Your leader advocated a total ban on all live animal exports, and, in fairness to her, she still does. I saw her on television the other night, and she said, 'I don't resile from my principles, and I will not abandon my own personal principles. But that's not the party, and I'm the leader of the party, so I will be subject to that.' She's still in favour of banning all live exports.”
“As an Australian, I tell a very sad tale. Our national anthem says 'Advance Australia fair'. All I can say is: we've advanced Australia rear—backwards. The greatest and most dramatic economic disaster outside of the Great Depression—and the mistake that was made there was not listening to Ted Theodore. If he'd been listened to, we'd have had no depression in Australia. Set that aside. The greatest disaster ever in the nation's history was when Paul Keating, then a minister in the Labor government, said, 'We in the ALP never get rid of jobs. We'll never, ever do that.' The timber industry in North Queensland was closed down by Graham Richardson. The wool industry was closed down by Paul Keating. Some 70,000 hardworking shearers, roustabouts and other people working in the wool industry lost their jobs.”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, the grand final is over; Queensland won—sorry about that! The season is over. A thousand North Queensland rugby league players are bored. And you know, PM, an idle mind is the devil's workshop. In some of the last jungles left on Earth, three million pigs are destroying our fauna and flora. Please give the boys back their rifles and licensed—I emphasise 'licensed'—access to national parks. Prime Minister, you'll rescue the now doomed cassowary and the North Queensland turtle. Give the boys back their air rifles. You may even eliminate some of the 2,000 million toads in North Queensland. Prime Minister, it's too late for the Rabbitohs—sorry, sorry!—and don't worry about the pests in this place. Please would you worry about the pests in North Queensland?”
“Quite separately, of course, is the fertiliser plant, employing over a thousand people directly and indirectly. It is paying $16.60. It produces diammonium phosphate: two parts natural gas and one part— (Time expired)”
“Mount Isa brings in $1½ billion a year, it is responsible for 15,000 jobs in the Australian economy and it is in desperate, desperate trouble. The trouble arises because the gas reserve resource policy gave Mount Isa gas at $6 a unit, the agreement ran out seven or eight years ago—maybe 10 or 12 years ago—and we've gone up to $16.60. It was $6; now it's $16.60. Our competitor nations—namely, Brazil, the United States and Russia, but particularly the United States and Russia—are getting their gas at $6 a unit while we're paying $16.60. Everyone has talked about the copper mine, and there is no doubt that it is in desperate trouble without that gas at a competitive price. All electricity and power, and a whole lot of the chemical processes at Mount Isa, need that gas.”
“'O'—I've got it back to front—is our natural wonderland. Enhance it. Use it. Enjoy it. Improve it. Protect it. And to the 'FF' in 'BORCHOFF': we're the freedom and fun party. We don't want any regulations! Take your regulations and do with them what I can't say in parliament. We didn't need those regulations. We got here, as Australians, without those regulations. And you've put the price of a house up about $200,000 with your regulations and taken it out of the reach of fellow Australians. We can't subdivide land, so we say, 'Advance Australia Fair; to every Australian a "quintare"'—that's a fifth of a hectare!”
“All of our underwear manufacturing has gone overseas; all of our motor vehicle manufacturing has gone overseas; all of our petrol has gone overseas. What the hell do we produce in this country? That's what you've reduced us to. We are just a little gum tree movement; that's all we are. We're just a gum tree movement. The 'CH' is for Christianity, and we make no apologies for this. If you look at Western civilisation, which is basically civilisation—and I refer to a number of historians, which I haven't got time to refer to in this place—it is the basis of their belief system in America. It is the basis of all the things about them. And that is the reason why a relatively small country, compared with China and other countries, can be so enormously powerful in what they have achieved; it's extraordinary.”
“In our little political party, we say we're about 'BORCHOFF'—it's like 'Gorbachev' without the 'Gor'. The B stands for build: we believe Australians should build—build Australia. The O is for our wonderful, beautiful nature wonderland; enjoy it, experience it, enhance it and, yes, protect it. 'Our nature wonderland'—that's the O. The R is for reward for those who work—not the slithering suits in Sydney that play market games with each other, but people who actually produce something of value for the rest of Australia. The O—I backtrack—is for 'Own Australia'. We believe Australians should own Australia. All our airports are foreign owned; almost all of our seaports are foreign owned. What the hell do we still own in this country?”
“Treasurer, we praised the Prime Minister for completion of the Great Inland Way. Now, disaster—the closure of copper by Glencore and phosphate by Dyno Nobel. Simultaneously, the government put bananas on the scaffold, accepting an import application from the Philippines—rife with disease and exploited wage earners. The expiration of the $6 a unit gas agreement precipitated doomsday for copper and phosphate. Our competitors pay $6; Australia pays $16.60. Treasurer, without a reserve resource policy, won't your government preside over the obliteration of Australia's fourth-biggest industrial centre, Mount Isa, and a goodbye to bananas?”
“Prime Minister, you'd be aware that three appropriations bills before the House require a hundred billion dollars in funding. The appropriation 10 years ago required only $50 billion. Another $50 billion is required to house the 400,000 people coming from overseas each year, particularly the 92 per cent of them who go to Sydney and Melbourne. Wouldn't the urgent demand of 80 per cent of Australians to stop migration save $50 billion this year, plus wouldn't a reserve resource policy on gas provide another $32 billion a year? Greenlighting the Galilee coal project and its rail line would provide yet another $17 billion. Shouldn't the government be about carrying out the will of the people and creating economic development?”
“And they believed in freedom. If you went in there with some restrictions and petty little rules and regulations, you would have been laughed out of their offices. (Time expired)”
“They do terrible things, they stop anything from happening and they make our lives miserable. There are very rare exceptions; Leo Hielscher was one of them. Here's just one little story before I close. They went in and said, 'We want to export bauxite from Queensland.' And Leo nearly died laughing. Exporting bauxite? 'We export aluminium, not bauxite!' And they said, 'Oh yes—cheap electricity.' We are building the biggest power station in the world and we're taking the coal for free. I mean, we're desperate for a reserve resource policy on gas. We took the coal for free! The biggest power station in the world, Gladstone, was fuelled on free coal. We had the cheapest electricity in the world, and hence we got one of the biggest aluminium industries in the world. These were great men. These were truly great men.”
“Each has said it was the other bloke, so I don't know! Queensland went from being a coal-importing state in a coal-importing nation to being the biggest coal-exporting state on Earth. One of the biggest copper-producing states on Earth. One of the biggest aluminium-producing states on Earth. Its agricultural production quadrupled. These were people who believed every day of their lives that they had to strain nerve, muscle and sinew to provide work and happiness and a wonderful life for people. That's how they were driven, not to save the planet or for some other ideological pursuit—which future generations will laugh at on a grand scale. No; these people were serious people. And Sir Leo Hielscher, quite rightly, has two of the six biggest bridges in Australia named for him. Public servants, normally, are bad.”
“I rise to ask the House to take note of the death of Sir Leo Hielscher and the Queensland economic miracle. Queensland was a Cinderella state. It had virtually no coalmining, very little mineral mining, very few cattle. It had nothing. And then Joh Bjelke-Petersen was elected premier, with Leo Hielscher put in charge of Queensland, and they took Australia from being a coal-importing country to Queensland becoming the biggest coal-exporting state on Earth. They took huge risks, putting thousands of millions of dollars into building railway lines and coal ports and opening up mines and towns. This man had the courage to do that, along with the then premier of Queensland, Bjelke-Petersen. I don't think anyone that was here at the time would deny that you could not separate the pair of them as to who was more or less responsible.”
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Glencore's announced closure of Mount Isa's copper smelter and the Townsville refinery takes down 30 supply mines and Australia's giant fertiliser plant. Townsville Enterprise estimates 15,000 jobs will vanish. Glencore's incompetence and unpleasantness notwithstanding, gas prices are $16 whilst in Russia and America they're $6. Surely a gas reserve resource policy is imperative. Further, can financial assistance be given on a conditional 50 per cent government ownership basis only to Glencore? Prime Minister, won't rescuing Mount Isa enrich the aquifers of your soul, enhancing your Christianity and patriotism?”
“Prime Minister, our computers advised that, after Newcastle and Gladstone, Mount Isa is Australia's biggest industrial centre. Most of Mount Isa is to vanish. Can the Prime Minister activate government to detour this pending disaster and reassure us that the essential service, the copper smelter, is to be owned by an entity partly, inter alia, answerable to the Australian people—further, that a gas reserve resource policy be urgently initiated to forestall the closure of this and the thousand-million-dollar-a-year Mount Isa fertiliser plant?”
“She had to give the clerk of the mining warden's court 25 bucks, and she said, 'When can I sell it?' The clerk said, 'Right now; go up to the real estate agent.' So she went down to the real estate agent, and two days later we sold the block and were able to complete our house. That process now takes two years and costs $75,000. How can you possibly countenance this level of incompetence? The only reason that we haven't got houses in Australia is that no-one can get around to doing these subdivisions and get through the barbed-wire entanglements of red tape that lie there. I think everyone in this House knows that, but you don't do anything about it. What we are proposing is abolishing— (Time expired)”
“If you have curved, galvanised iron—ripple iron, as we had in the old days—so long as your house is not more than seven or maybe eight metres wide, you don't need any timber underneath—no supports. It is tremendously strong, and I'm talking about heavy galvanised iron which is used in culverts. The cost of building a house should be negligible. Let me take my own home town of Charters Towers as an example. My wife and I bought 20 acres, and we couldn't afford to complete our little Logan unit, which cost $23,000—in terms of today's money, it was about 60 grand—so she had to go down and subdivide. It took her 25 minutes to fill out a form.”