Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I applaud the motion we are debating on the importation of bananas and I applaud the LNP for taking up the issue. By the same token, the comments by the government members are entirely valid. In seven years there was not a single application to come into this country that was rejected, so it is an act of extraordinary hypocrisy if they are coming up here and criticising the ALP. If the ALP deserve to be criticised for this decision, which they do, then those on the other side should be condemned a hundredfold because pork, salmon, vannamei prawn, grapes, durian, oranges and apples were all allowed into this country. The list is a mile long. We asked the AQIS people in North Queensland at their big meeting on bananas: ‘What application has been rejected?’ They went out and rang up Canberra and they could not find anything that had been rejected.

There was an IRA produced. In fact, there were actually four IRAs produced, and at each stage there was a chance to object. The final IRA was done not by the ALP. The fourth IRA was done by the National Party. And the only question was whether these blokes were going to rubber-stamp your decision or whether they were not. Well, they did.

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