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

In there you will find, unless it was cut out by the editors, the story of the founder of the Country Party. A lot of people claim to be the founder of the Country Party, but I think most would agree that the real leader, and the person who really founded the party, was Jack McEwen. At 28 years of age, Jack was a really big dairy farmer. He owned three reasonable sized dairy farms at that stage. He called a meeting of the dairy farmers throughout Victoria and there was a huge roll-up. He said: 'From now on, all of the milk gets sold through a cooperative. You can only buy milk through the cooperative and we're putting a decent price on our product, because I am sick of living in a galvanised iron shed on a dirt floor eating rabbits.' What we are talking about here is collective action; it is a trade union type action taken by farmers.

Three of the wealthier, more established families in the industry cast disparaging remarks upon Jack McEwen and his idea and said flatly that they would not conform. So Jack dragged them out the back and belted the hell out of them physically and then dragged them back in, much the worse for wear. And he said: 'They've seen reason now. Let's get on with the meeting.' And from that day forth he was called Black Jack McEwen. For those of you who are not as old as I am, Black Jack was a sock filled with sand; you belted people with it and it left no marks. I am serious!

There is another person called Black Jack, though it is not used quite so familiarly. This is a bloke called Anthony, who did exactly the same thing in the banana industry. He was a very famous leader of the Country Party. His son was Doug Anthony, who was Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and one of the greatest ministers who ever served in this place. It was exactly the same story. He got all the banana growers together and said: 'Hey fellas, from now on all the bananas get sold through a cooperative.' This was collective action. We achieved it in Australia.

It is all right for people to criticise trade unions, but you want to know a little bit about the history of your country before you come in here and shoot your mouth off. One hundred years ago—probably 110 years ago now—one in 30 of us who went down the mines never came back up again or died the horrific death of miner's phthisis of the lungs. Deputy Speaker Kelly, if you doubt my words, walk through that door. There is a magnificent portrait of the first member for Kennedy. He left this parliament dying of miner's phthisis of the lungs. Andrew Fisher, the third Prime Minister of Australia, left parliament dying of miner's phthisis of the lungs. His dad had already died of miner's phthisis of the lungs. The first Labor Premier in the world was Anderson Dawson. He left parliament dying of dust on the lungs. Do not doubt it for a moment. In a magnificent work on the social history of Australia: 'Of the men that worked for over two years digging the sewerage ditches in Sydney—over 2,000 of them—every single one of them who worked for more than two years died of miner's phthisis of the lungs.' You can sit and spit upon trade unions as much as you like. But we could be still out there and dying. Don't think it would not be happening.

I attended a rally by the CFMEU, in Brisbane, over safety conditions in the building of a tunnel in Brisbane. The ETU was involved as well. They said, 'They are ramming things through. It is getting more and more dangerous and we are having more and more accidents.' I attended another rally, over the same issue, three weeks later, because a man was in hospital dying from an accident that had occurred two days before. You can say, 'We won't allow any people to look at safety issues.' And we the workers can die. Here is a case of it. That worker happened to be a bloke called Sam Beveridge, as it turned out, from my own home town. In fact, his brother was mayor of my home town, Charters Towers.

A lady came to see me, today, lobbying on this issue. She had lost her husband. He had spoken to the union that morning and had said, 'I'm really worried.' The union bloke said, 'I can see you are desperately worried.' The man said, 'It's a really dangerous job you're asking me to do, but I'm not going to ask any young blokes to do it. I'm going to do it myself.' He died as well. I do not know how many people have died as the result of a lack of safety in this building.

I am not going to sit here and be hypocritical enough to say that the builders' workers union were angels. There were a lot of very bad things taking place. They come under the CFMEU, and I have known the CFMEU, the coalmining union, all of my life. Whilst I have had a lot of punch-ups with them through the years they have never broken faith with the people they represent. When they took over the building workers' union there were a lot of people in there who had broken faith, with the people they represented, for their own gain.

It has not been easy for them to weed these people out. But over the recent leadership—the honourable shadow minister, here, is Michael O'Connor's brother—they proceeded. There has been a lot of blood everywhere—figuratively speaking—in ridding the union of a lot of bad people. A lot of those people who had been got rid of have made allegations to try to get themselves off the hook. That has brought us to where we are at the moment.

I will say not on behalf of the Liberal Party but on behalf of what is left of the National Party, which does not exist in Queensland as it is an affiliate of the Liberal Party, that their founder was responsible—we could have continued living on dirt floors and galvanised iron, working for nothing and eating rabbits! But if there was going to be change there had to be an amount of coercive pressure. I do not resile from using that statement.

In the history of Australia there is a man who was the wealthiest man in Queensland—he died with the highest probate ever paid in Queensland. When you go to my home town of Charters Towers his name, Richard Arida, is up there. It was 1882. He broke faith with all the rich people in society and gave, in today's money, $1 million to the strike fund, because this man could not live with his conscious knowing that people in his town were dying on a continuous basis. If anyone in this chamber has doubts about this, at the mine my son worked the roof collapsed. It was in the early part of last century. It killed 27 people. At the other end of the electorate, at Mount Mulligan, in one explosion, in one hour, 72 people—every male in the town of Mount Mulligan—died in that explosion. If you think we can go on and not have representatives of the workers to be able to defend us in these situations, you have another thing coming.

The minister spoke about the rule of law. That is rather interesting. There are three great pillars of the rule of law, and one of them is your right to silence. We all watch the movies. We all watch the television. 'You have the right to remain silent' is the first thing they say when they arrest you. Well, you do not have it in the building industry! You get put in jail if you remain silent. So do not come in here and preach about the rule of law, because you are spitting upon the rule of law in this legislation. If you want to fix up bad things, you make the effort of going in there and weed out the grafters who have pulled stunts when the concrete is being poured, and getting paid, personally—in their own pockets, not in the pockets of the union—and you track them down and put them in jail. Do not take away, from a whole branch of industry in Australia the right to work safely. I go no further than the brother of the mayor of Charters Towers. I go no further than the first member for Kennedy, when I walk through the door, there. I go no further than that.

So, your right to remain silent is a very important law. This legislation takes away your right to remain silent. And not only does it take away your right to remain silent; it also says that you have to give evidence. If you are asked to give evidence, you are compelled to give that evidence. Now, there would be very few places on earth where the law says that. We know that in some countries, China being one of them, there are still cases going on today where this sort of thing happens, but it is not in their legislation. This might be happening in countries in Africa, but it is not in legislation; it is just discretionary power. This is going to be put into legislation. In our state, the union is affiliated with the ALP, so my party gets nothing out of it; we did not get a cent from this trade union in the last election; there is no benefit for us. But why we have remained such strident, staunch supporters of this union is over the issue of section 457s. They were not introduced by the Liberal Party; they were introduced by the Labor Party. To their extraordinary shame in the history of Australia, they introduced them. In fact, they were bringing in 160,000 workers a year. But why I love this union, even though it is affiliated with the ALP in my state, is that their president stood up and said to Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, 'You must understand, Prime Minister, that we will not tolerate the jobs being taken off Australians and given to section 457 workers, undermining our pay and conditions and taking our jobs off us.'

As I have said in this House a number of times, the last government, the ALP government, and this government, the LNP government, in their wisdom, are bringing 650,000 people a year into an economy that is generating only 200,000 jobs. And I ask the question: where are you going to get the welfare money to pay for 450,000 people each year who are going on the dole? Of course, I did not get an intelligent response, but an intelligent response would have said, well, most of them are here for only four years. But I tell you what: no-one was game to give that response, because everybody knows that they are not going home; it is ridiculous to even talk about them going home—the student visas and the section 457s. And Tony Abbott, two weeks after, when I asked the question in parliament—I do not want to flatter myself that he took any notice of me, but, all the same, it was two weeks after I asked the question—attempted to clamp down on the over a million people who are overstays on section 457s or student visas. He tried to clamp down. I mean, it was not like we were going around with a whip, flogging people. We asked them for their identification; that is all.

Well, the way the Australian media fell upon Abbott, you would have thought he was General Custer at Little Bighorn! And within four weeks he was gone from the prime ministership—a very salutary lesson to anyone in this place who tries to enforce the overstays. When they are here, they are here. Have a look at the American election campaign. Watch any of the debates and see how much of that debate is about the Latinos who are in America illegally—whether they should be sent home or not. But I have not noticed anyone in America sending them home. That is not the real world. That does not happen. So, the very distinguished minister for welfare got up two weeks later and said that half of the federal budget will go to welfare within 10 years. It is a quarter now; it will go to half. And you whistle and I will point where that half is going—$650,000 being brought into an economy that is producing only 200,000 jobs and has over 200,000 school leavers. You do not have to be Albert Einstein to add it up here and figure out where this is going.

But they are taking our jobs out from under us, and the only institution that I know of in this country that has fought courageously at great expense to themselves has been the CFMEU, and today I pay them a very fine tribute. (Time expired)

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