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

The Gold Coast is not the end of the world; it is not even the start of the end of the world. We do not pass laws for 400,000 people in a state of 4½ million people. Mr Deputy Speaker, you can see the attitude. If you talk about humanity, justice and the rule of law, you are immediately tagged by this mob because they are a bunch of bullies. 'Bullies' is the word used extensively and continuously in the media in Queensland, outside of the Murdoch press, to describe the Queensland government. I think that everyone who I have run into and has expressed an opinion about that government and even their own supporters would say that. Mr Deputy Speaker, let him have his indulgence. I hope you have good fun with these little toys that you have because the people of Queensland cannot afford to have 7,000 people in jail.

We were regarded as very right wing—and I would use the word 'barbarian' again for the government of the 1980s—but not once during that period did we introduce mandatory sentencing and not once did we introduce reverse onus of proof. As a very active and I might even say powerful member of that government, I am very proud to be able to say that. We were people who acted in a confrontational manner when we were called upon to do so—no-one acted more aggressively than that Bjelke-Petersen government, I can assure you.

Let us get back to these 7,000 people in jail. That government, which was supposed to be a law and order, strong government—and we were—had 2,000 people in jail. The LNP last year had 7,000 people in jail. It is over $200,000 per person in jail. You can rant and rave about people getting drunk and driving cars—and there is no doubt that they should not and that they should be punished—but the people being punished are the poor taxpayers in Queensland. They are the ones suffering most of the punishment here. If we had some community service out on the territory border, up in Burketown or somewhere, I might have a different attitude, but when these people are costing us $200,000 a year then we are talking about a different animal altogether.

I have a little document here that caused a bit of a stir at the time it was written, which was the year 1215. It is called the Magna Carta. On page 39 it says that no free man is to be arrested or imprisoned except by the legal judgement of his peers. It is saying that some of these principles of justice are worth dying for. A lot of my forebears came from England. There is no doubt that some of them, like all of the people of England at the time, were involved in trying to get a system of justice that was fair and—I cannot avoid repetition—a system that delivered real justice to the people.

I have been informed that this legislation is mandatory sentencing. If you have had some illegal dealings with firearms then you have a mandatory sentencing period of four or five years, or whatever it might be. I have had 41 years of drawing up legislation myself—about 10 of those years as a minister and many times on committees prior to that—and know that you have to look at the effect of legislation. If some poor innocent beggar decides he would like a sight for his gun, a holding package for his gun or maybe actually a weapon and he orders it on the internet, when it comes in he will find out he has breached these laws and he will go to jail for five years.

The member for La Trobe, the previous speaker, talked about the bikie laws in Queensland. When they originally came out they covered the Ulysses Club and the Vietnam vets club, so we had all of our war heroes being raced off to jail by the police. They did modify it because they realised the mistake that they had made. They cast the net so widely that it picked them up. For those who do not know, you have to be pretty upper class, such as a barrister, a specialist surgeon, a psychiatrist or similar, to belong to the Ulysses Club. They are the elite of society. Of course the Vietnam Vets were people prepared to die protecting and defending their country. These people were caught by the act and were being carted off to jail—some poor school teacher librarian was carted off because she was talking to two bikies in a pub. I don't think she had ever seen violence in her whole life!

You get your name in The Courier-Mail by going out there and thumping your chest, like 'I'm really tough', and the last government of Queensland did that all the time. It intrigued me, because we never had to do it. No-one ever questioned whether we were tough or not—they knew we were tough. We did not have to go out and prove it by putting forward ridiculous legislation of this nature. There was a gentleman in the state parliament called Neil Turner, and Neil said, 'As long as I am in this place, you will never ever get reverse onus of proof or mandatory sentencing.' This bloke had a background as a shearer, a fencer, a stockman, he owned a cattle place and a couple of butchers shops by the time he went into parliament—he had done all right for himself. He had knocked out the heavyweight champion of Queensland when he was 19 years of age—a pretty tough boy. He did not have to have a university education to know that we were not going with mandatory sentencing and reverse onus of proof. He was determined that it would not happen. He and I and half a dozen others spent a pleasant 10 years on the backbench, seeing a lot of ning-nongs get promoted over us, because we would not roll over and accept mandatory sentencing and reverse onus of proof. Those close to the people in their electorate must know of cases of the grossest injustice that occur when you do these sorts of things.

As I have throughout all my parliamentary history, I will continue to oppose mandatory sentencing and reverse onus of proof. In this case the legislation, as far as I can see, is drawn so widely and so loosely that what you are doing is delivering discretionary powers. Some of my closest friends on the planet have been policemen, and some of the bravest and most decent men I know come from the police force, but I have lived in small towns where the policeman has wanted to take out a certain girl and she was going out with a bloke in the town, and it was amazing how many times that bloke from the town went up on charges and went to jail. So discretionary powers are not to be delivered to anyone. As far back as the Magna Carta, men have thought these principles were worth dying for. To stand up to King John and to stand up to all the other tyrants down through history men have had to sacrifice their lives, but to see little pygmies in this place run away and throw all those principles to the wind like they count for nothing is a demonstration of the relative sense of justice that these pygmies have compared to the sense of justice that the great heroes of history displayed in the stands they made on issues similar to this.

I share the comments made by the member for La Trobe about bikies and their activities in Queensland, and I can suggest a number of notorious cases where they needed to be reined in. But extra resources should have been put in that direction—not discretionary powers but extra resources. Frankly, if they are not breaking the law then they should not be going to jail. If they are breaking the law, then the resources to ensure that they do go to jail should be put in place to do the job. I venture to suggest that, if we had more sensible gun laws in Queensland, some of the 200 policemen who are out there driving us all crazy enforcing those laws could be relieved from that to do the real work of police, which is standing up to dangerous elements in our society such as some of these bikie gangs. We would have been a hell of a lot better off. I do not think the member for La Trobe was wrong when he said that we have the problem back again and it is pretty bad and pretty serious. I would agree with that. After all those draconian laws, you ended up with the problem still there—so your draconian laws did not seem to achieve very much at all. If resources had been taken out of the most stupid areas they operate in at present, it might have made a difference. I would say over 80 per cent of the population of Queensland, if asked whether the traffic police perform revenue raising duties for the government or whether they perform a worthwhile exercise, would say it was revenue raising for the government and was not a worthwhile exercise. Some of those resources could have been converted over to this area.

Some members of the police force we are recruiting now are not tough sorts of people—they are not big, tough people who can go out and mix it with some of the brutal types we get in bikie gangs. They are a different class of people altogether—they are more suited to the role of clerk than going out and doing confrontational work. The very real shortcomings of the police intake were glaringly obvious in their failure to cope with the bikie situation. I remember one classic example which occurred in Mt Isa where there were two police sitting in a car watching a woman be bashed nearly to death. She was flown out by the flying doctor the next day with a suspected fractured skull; she had bruises all over her head. I called a public meeting over the issue and the inspector of police said, 'Well what were we to do?' One police officer in the car was a little woman and the policeman was not a very formidable bloke. They were not going to get out of the car. There were 15 of the worst possible types kicking this poor woman to death and one of the famous Daisys, a famous rugby league family, George, went over, by himself, he got kicked unconscious, and they are still sitting in the car watching it all happen.

These are not real policemen. There is a serious problem in Queensland. They are talking about developing a new section of the police force, which goes back to the days when we had tough coppers who gave us all a kick in the pants if we got out of line when we as young blokes deserved it. They were the sort of people you did not trifle with. We are now at the stage where the inspector of police—he was actually having a go at me as a member of parliament—said: 'You've forced us into a situation where we have got these people who could not remotely go in there to protect this woman's life.' I might add that a few fellows who were at the disco had the courage to come out and stand up to the 15 bullies there. Their coming out probably saved the life of George Daisy. He should have received a commendation, but, because the police were sitting there in their car, he did not get a bravery commendation after saving this woman's life. I tell this story, because we do not have police who are the sort of people to confront the sort of animals we have. I would share the views of the last speaker on the point. Some of these motorcycle clubs—not all of them; the Vietnam Vets' Harley Davidson club led the Anzac procession—(Time expired)

See this speech in context