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

I listened to the last two speakers from the Labor Party side. The Labor Party will stand in infamy on the issue of Aboriginal affairs. John Howard quoted the great architect in Great Britain who built the magnificent cathedral, amongst many other things. When asked, 'What do you want written on your tomb?' he said, 'My epitaph is this cathedral.'

I am probably doing a little bit of skiting here, but this morning I saw a number of the councillors from the regional shire councils of Queensland, down here for their annual conference. I saw a group of five whitefellas and two blackfellas, and they were just talking like ordinary people. That would have been unthinkable 35 or 40 years ago. When I was given the portfolio and given directions by our federal president to fix up 'the Aboriginal thing', as he called it, in Queensland, he said he would stand behind me—it wasn't all honourable; remember, I'm scared of land rights! They wanted to put the fires out in Queensland, where there was great confrontation between the government and the First Australian people, and that was how I ended up in the portfolio. It was sort of like bringing the gunslinger to town. I was the gunslinger, and I think I was a gunslinger who was going to be shot; that was my opinion at the time.

The first thing that I could see was that the whitefellas were running the whole show. I went to Yarrabah, which is the biggest First Australians community in Australia, with 4½ to 5 thousand people, and met the 22 people that made all the decisions in Yarrabah, and every single one of them was a whitefella. Some of the architects of self-management—Roy Gray, Alfie Neal, Mickey Cornley—some of these blokes would say, 'It hasn't been good; it hasn't turned out as well.' I said to them, 'If I came to this place and saw 22 decision makers and they were all whitefellas, and now I come to this place and I see that 21 decision makers are blackfellas, that is really what it is all about!'

Whilst the ALP lives in infamy—when they got control of the state government in 1990 they immediately reversed almost everything. They put great impositions upon the councils, which meant they had to get whitefellas to come in and become CEOs. The First Australians, my brother cousins, lacked experience in these sorts of things—administration, handling of finances and education—and to a large extent the 28,000 people concerned, it could be argued, did not have the ability to run their own affairs. Of course, in the five years that I was minister, they proved that they could. There was not a single adverse report from the Auditor-General throughout that five-year period. In other words, every single community—they were not running perfectly and their books were not perfect, but there was no money going astray and the services were being delivered.

We kept a whitefella in there, and he was there as an auditor. He was there to audit the service delivery—water supply, sewerage, upkeep on the roads—and also to audit the money. He was to go over once a fortnight to the community council and audit the operations. He was there also as an adviser, if they wanted to ask advice, and he had a written direction from myself that if he appeared anywhere near those council officers, except for that half-day audit, he would be sacked instantaneously. I sent that direction for him: 'You're not in the driver's seat anymore; you're just checking that the driver's driving on the right-hand side of the road. That's all we're doing here.'

You have to understand that these people were now parcelling out $30 million. They had to deliver these services, and they did it. They did it to a point where this morning I could see those people speaking as equals, which was something that was unthinkable 30 years ago. When I introduced all the legislation in Queensland—as the media would have it, 'the most radical legislation in Australian history was coming out of the most conservative government in Australian history', which is probably a reasonable call—I said that, to those people that did not see the horror of what was but could see the brief small pinpoint of light of what might be today, we pay tribute. I saw the outcome this morning.

The Courier Mail had a front page article of what they call the 'cattle leases'—a bit of comic humour. My son went to a number of meetings and they kept talking about cattle leases, and he said: 'There's no cattle leases. That's our argument. You haven't given pastoral leases out.' They said, 'Mate, it's not cattle leases'. They refer to the nearly 1,000 leases that went through under the administration that God gave me the great privilege of being responsible for.

I cannot think of a single initiative that I took during that period of time that came from me. Let me dwell on the housing for a moment. A person came in today—a blackfella mate of mine—and he said he just reckons you're so terrific. And he said something about the housing. What happened in the housing was, there was a bloke called Greg Wallace, a black bloke from Hope Vale—Noelie Pearson and Mattie Bowen's home town—and Greg got them working for the dole. It was the first time 60 Minutes has ever done a repeat program. There was such an enormous positive reaction throughout Australia that these people were voluntarily working for the dole. They did not feel that they should take the money. That is really the essence of the legislation that is coming forward today. They should not take that money without working. They voluntarily started working for the dole, and it spread into all the other community areas.

Gerhardt Pearson, Noelie's brother, rang me up and he said: 'Bobby, why don't we use the Work for the Dole labour to build the houses?' I said, 'That's a fantastic idea', in sharp contrast to the ALP people who have held these portfolios. I rang up Gerry Hand, and he said: 'Great idea! Let's just do it.' So we did it. I had enough money to build about 400 homes. We built nearly 2,000 homes because, instead of flying whitefellas in—paying the fare in and the fare out; providing them with accommodation; providing them with food and serviced rooms, which cost a fortune; paying them a living-away-from-home allowance—we did not pay any of those things. Not only did we not pay any of those things but half the award was being met from the dole payments.

The architects were Eric Law and Lester Rosendale. Lester died a couple of years ago. But they were truly great men. They could foresee something that other people could not. The leadership there was responsible for each of these decisions. I happened to be lucky enough—God was good—and I happened to be there at the time and was able to play a key role in making sure these things happened. While I am saying we did it, it was not easy. The Premier, I think, rang up the state president some eight times—something like that—to have me sacked. But then the Premier reverted—and I say this in tribute to Joh Bejelke-Petersen—and that same Lester Rosendale, his father said, 'You know, we founded Hope Vale.'

This is the place where Noel Pearson and Matty Bowen, one of the greatest fullbacks in rugby league history, came from. It is where I think the first Australian Lutheran priest came out of. That was George Rosendale, who is one of the Rosendales. They had so many firsts. They had the first Australian member of parliament—Eric Deeral came from there as well.

George Rosendale told me how this was established. Joh Bjelke-Petersen got the land for it—140,000 hectares—and Joh and he camped out for three months together on horseback. They picked out the site for the town and cleared the main street with hand axes. He said: 'Whilst it sounds like we did a lot of work, we had a hell of a lot of fun—fishing, shooting and running around together. It was good fun.' In the later years Bjelke-Petersen changed completely and became the crusader of the reforms that we were putting through.

Most of all I had to confront why no-one had jobs. They had the highest crime rate, the highest suicide rates and the highest mothering rates at Yarrabah. Why was my home town of Cloncurry, with 50 per cent or more of First Australian descent—I often claim to be First Australian myself—not like that? Foremen in main roads were blackfellas. Engine drivers in the railway were blackfellas. They were in all the senior positions in the town. A couple of the blackfellas' kids from Cloncurry went away to become doctors. The football teams were often led by First Australians. So why was it so different in Yarrabah?

For those who like reading books I strongly recommend Hernando De Soto's The Mystery of Capital. I was reading Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative at the time, which also impacted upon me. I could clearly see that the one thing we needed was a title deed. I will illustrate what I am talking about here. We have to go into these welfare cards to deal with the symptoms, but what is the problem? The problem is that in Cloncurry you could go down to the river, as I did, and take up 15 acres of vacant crown land and become a landowner. With that title deed I could borrow money off the bank.

Doomadgee is one of our top centres. The rugby league team there won the premiership for a number of years. A man came up—and I will not use his name without his permission—and said, 'Bob, I have got one of those blocks.' I said, 'Is it one of those 30,000-acre blocks?' He said yes. This is in a 40-inch rainfall area. He said he wanted to get cattle. I asked if he had been to see the banks. He said, 'Of course I went to see the bank.' He had a couple of trucks working at the mines. I asked, 'What did they say?' He said, 'They said, "No go, mate. We want security. We want mortgageability. We want a title deed."'

Another bloke there—and he did not like me a lot—got up at a council meeting and said: 'I don't need any title deeds. I have got 1,000 head of cattle together. They are my cattle. I'm a Gungalida man.' I said, 'Since you are stupid enough to stand up in a public place and shoot your mouth off, I would say that the lawyers will be ringing you up this afternoon.' I went out of there to lunch with the most prominent family in Doomadgee and before I had sat down he said, 'Did you hear that bloke who said he owned all the cattle? No, they don't own cattle. They are my cattle. I'm a Gungalida man.' They cannot go out there and work because they cannot get a return for it because you have got no security of ownership of land. Therein lies the problem. We issued 800 deeds. There have been none issued in the 29 years since. It is a disgrace and a reflection upon the ALP. Mal Brough was a great exception to the rule.

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