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

The member for Denison and I very much oppose the proposal with respect to time for questions. We are not going to divide and waste the time of the House. Since we have very strong feelings about this, we very much appreciate the assurances from you, Mr Speaker, and from the opposition and the government that a little bit more time will be provided to us. I would point out that the member for Denison and I, as the member for Kennedy, are two of the people furthest away from this area. We need more time to explain our position to people who come from the big cities who really do not have a feeling for some of the problems existing in very isolated communities.

Mr Randall interjecting—

There is a Western Australian making a noise there and he is quite entitled to. Those on that side of the House were in government for 12 years, and I do not think anyone was particularly admiring of their government's performance in Western Australia—not the people I know from Western Australia. Maybe you need a little more self-assertiveness.

This place has been reduced—let's be honest—to dorothy dixers from one side and banana peels from the other in the amount of intelligent debate. The speaker before last referred to Peter Andren, who put out a press release in his last parliament saying that in this parliament there would be only three people who ask genuine questions on behalf of the people of Australia and that the rest of it is all politics. That is almost a direct quote from one of his last press statements.

In the Queensland parliament in the years I was there I can tell you that the questions asked by National Party members were anything but dorothy dixers. I would say that at least once a week Premier Bjelke-Petersen called in one or the other to be roasted over the question they had dumped into the parliament. It does not serve the interests of the Australian people to muzzle your back bench. It does not serve the interests of the Australian people every morning to throw banana peels in front of government and think that that is your job. To illustrate my point, at the commencement of the state election campaign in Queensland one leader savagely attacked the other five times. Then the next leader came on and he savagely attacked the other four times. I was looking at my notes and I did not mention either of them. I was going to say what we were going to do for Queensland. You can argue whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, but that is not the way this place should be.

As far as I am concerned, every three weeks crossbenchers have a minute and a half of the public forum of Australia—question time is the public forum. I do not think the parliament really has that role; whether it should or not is a matter for debate. Question time most certainly is a forum which a lot of people in Australia watch. The only people who are asking genuine questions in the public interest—and I do not want to say that is true all the time because sometimes the opposition does and at odd times there is a contribution from the government. I believe that taking that half minute from our minute and a half every three works is muzzling and emasculating the voice of the people.

You have a party position but the people who sit here do not. Even Adam Bandt and I, who represent a party, do not have a party position in the sense I mean here. All the more reason why we appreciate your indulgence and respect, Mr Speaker, for the interests of the crossbenchers in providing that degree of latitude. The opposition's position can be put repeatedly throughout question time and the government's position can be put repeatedly throughout question time, but the crossbenchers' position cannot be put repeatedly throughout question time. We very much think that your indulgence there is more than justified.

I want to use an illustration to indicate why we need that time. If you go through the questions I ask, you see that yes, I am, like everyone else in this place, guilty of a little bit of pejorative twist in the questions but I send my questions to the minister. I am not here to throw banana peels in front of the government. I want genuine debate, and you do not get genuine debate by springing a question onto a minister three seconds before he gets up to speak—that is banana peels. When the Liberals were in power, I sent my questions to them as I do when Labor is in power. I want an intelligent response; I am not here to play political games.

Let me be very specific. The very great question for this country in the live cattle debate was that as a Christian nation we have a responsibility to help our fellow man, whoever they may be—the Good Samaritan and all that in the Gospels. I hope Indonesia have the same attitude because we have cut off their food pipeline. We are fighting wars. We have fought wars continually since I was handed a rifle in 1964 to protect our oil pipeline. The food pipeline is infinitely more important. The President of Indonesia has said, 'You can take these people because you have miles of empty space.' I will be very technical about this. If you take out 120 kilometres of coastline, the golden boomerang from Cairns, through Brisbane and Sydney to Adelaide, with a little dot around Perth, there are fewer than a million people living on a landmass—

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