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

He's not going to talk about that. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't either. I'd try desperately to hide. Border Protection inspects 0.22 per cent. Almost all the firearms come in in containers, and there's a 0.2 per cent inspection rate. When we have a look at the postal services, we find that 67,000 prohibited imports were seized from the 25 per cent of mail inspected. So, if we inspect the containers, how many seizures are we going to see there? But we're not inspecting them at all. In fact, he is going to punish people—and I'll give you an example in a moment of the punishment that he wants to mete out to people—but is he doing anything about stopping the illegal firearms from coming in? Obviously, they're coming in in containers and with metal items such as motor cars, tractors et cetera, and he's doing absolutely nothing about it.

This is what he wants to do—and I have the classic case. A bloke had been away on holidays overseas with his wife for two months. He came home, got the mail and found out that his gun licence was overdue and had been automatically terminated. So he was holding guns illegally. Now, under this minister, he would do five years in jail. He's president of the Rotary club. He's president of the local golf club. He has been very active in supporting the local rugby league. He is, in fact, the town's leading citizen. What he was subjected to by you, Minister, was six police, wearing bullet-proof vests and with automatic weapons, surrounding his house. This is the leading citizen in the town. This is what you want to subject these people to through legislation. I belonged to a government which—using the terms 'right-wing' and 'left-wing'—was the most right wing government the country has ever seen. But, in my 20 years in the state house, not once did the government get through legislation that reversed the onus of proof or imposed mandatory sentencing—not once. So we might have been bushwhackers or rednecks or whatever you want to call us, but we did know elementary justice and fairness when we saw it.

You come into this place. You have once again succeeded in getting every single person in this place offside—every single person. There could be no two people more unalike than me and the Greens representative here, Adam Bandt, and yet you've got us together. Congratulations! (Time expired)

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