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

I went along to every one of those meetings and did everything I could possibly humanly do. You voted for it. You are the architect of it. This gentleman over here from Leichardt making all the noise, the temporary member for Leichardt, and his party voted for it.

I want to go back to this gentleman. Let us call him Fred. The police boat came in and Fred waved and he offered the police a couple of beers and they said, 'No, we are here to arrest you.' This person came to see me. He was dreadfully upset. In all of their years in Australia—and his family had migrated many years before—no-one had ever been arrested before. He was left with a criminal conviction. We had enormous difficulty having the criminal conviction removed. I for one grovelled on my bended knees to the government and government officials on both sides of the parliament—it was a transition of government—to try and get the criminal charges removed and the criminal record expunged.

I will conclude on this note, Mr Deputy Speaker. I recommend to everyone to go along and see that wonderful movie of Russell Crowe's called Robin Hood. It is very historically correct. It is a rundown to the Magna Carta. I raced home and got out all my books on Magna Carta because I would bet London to a brick on that it would be in that great piece of architecture for our culture and our laws called the Great Charter—Magna Carta in Latin. Sure enough, there it was: the people have a right to sustenance from the land and the sea. The Crown has no right to take away their right to sustenance. Our right of sustenance was taken away from us on a massive scale by the Liberal Party and now today it is being taken away from us by the ALP. If members on my right, on the opposition benches, are in any way genuine, when we move the motion and divide the House to get the marine parks back to one quarter of their current size, I would expect that if they are consistent they will support that resolution of the parliament. I will deeply appreciate their support.

My family go back 130 or 140 years in North Queensland. For all of our history North Queenslanders have farmed those areas and there has been no diminution in the fish populations. There was never any evidence produced at any stage that there was diminishing of the fish populations. When you consider that the average fish has about 20,000 eggs it lays every year then you can realise that it is a bit silly to talk about some bloke going out there destroying the fish populations. So the argument was very spurious and the Liberal Party were playing to the environmental push and influences in their own party. The ALP were most certainly playing to those influences and under the puppet masters the Greens, which please God in the forthcoming election will be eliminated. They will be eliminated by my party.

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