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

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (10) as circulated in my name:

(1) Schedule 1, item 2, page 3 (lines 23 and 24), omit paragraph 3(d).

(2) Schedule 1, item 3, page 3 (lines 27 to 31), omit the item.

(3) Schedule 1, item 16, page 5 (lines 4 to 7), omit the item.

(4) Schedule 1, items 23 and 24, page 5 (line 23) to page 6 (line 2), omit the items.

(5) Schedule 1, item 31, page 6 (lines 23 to 26), omit the item.

(6) Schedule 1, items 36 to 39, page 7 (lines 8 to 25), omit the items.

(7) Schedule 1, item 49, page 10 (lines 6 and 7), omit paragraph 10(h).

(8) Schedule 1, items 52 to 71, page 20 (line 14) to page 39 (line 9), omit the items, substitute:

52 Part 1 of Chapter 7

Repeal the Part.

53 Division 1 of Part 2 of Chapter 7

Repeal the Division.

(9) Schedule 1, items 78 to 86, page 46 (line 10) to page 47 (line 24), omit the items, substitute:

78 Section 65

Repeal the section.

(10) Schedule 1, item 103, page 50 (lines 1 to 13), omit the item.

I will not go into the details of these amendments, because I think most people have made up their minds about which way they are going here. The amendments cut to the coercive powers. There are certain pillars upon which our society is built—habeas corpus, the fact that land cannot be taken from us, section 39 of the Magna Carta. A more modern one is the right to silence. It is accepted in every single jurisdiction in the world that I know of. You cannot have it tortured out of you; we are not the Spanish Inquisition. And that is really what the coercive powers are about: we can grab you, hold you, put you in incarceration and you will talk—and if you do not talk you are breaching the law and we are going to keep you there indefinitely.

Does any fair-minded person really believe that that is what should be happening here? The history of this is that there was excessive behaviour at one stage, going back to the days of the painters and dockers. But we have to go back 50 years now in order to quote those sorts of incidents. There may have been some excessive behaviour that sparked this legislation. But it was bad legislation at the start. It was excessive legislation. I go back to that famous legal phrase that hard cases make bad law.

We are continuing on with the bad law, all due respect to the government, because this is a cunning little two-step. It was the people on my right who decided we would deregulate the labour market. Ask the farmers about deregulation. Ask them how they fared under deregulation. When the dairy farmers were deregulated and faced these sorts of oppressive powers—

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