Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

We made a decision in the last state election in Queensland not to run in all seats because we had very limited resources. We could only run in a very small number of seats. If we had attempted to spread those resources out, we wouldn't have got many votes. I may have seen a thousand advertisements for the 'yes' vote and the only advertisement I saw for the 'no' vote was on television. The only ones I saw for us was where we got boards and painted them with paintbrushes because that's all the money we had. And it would be rather interesting to find out where the tens of millions of dollars that was spent on the 'yes' campaign came from. I'm rather curious about that and we will be having a close look at that. But it's quite clear that we had no money to spend at all.

So if you've got a massive campaign—I won't say brainwashing—to get people to believe in your point of view and there's no campaign from the other side whatsoever then it's not surprising that you win the vote. And I might add the honourable member from Melbourne, with whom I agree on many things, just forgot to mention the fact that you are legally married in the sense that the legal concept of marriage, if you live together, is imposed upon you. When I was asked to vote in the very first referendum I voted in, I was lied to by the government, and it's very ironic that in the last effective referendum I voted in I was lied to again. They said they want equality. Well, they got equality now. It is imposed upon you whether you like it or whether you don't by the laws of this country. So what was it all about? It was just about a name. That's all it was about.

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