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

I commend the previous speaker. A lot of what he said is very relevant to what we are discussing here today. I don't know whether the schools still have compulsory reading of 1984 and Brave New Worldthe idea that big brother is watching and that you have no right to privacy. They were both profoundly scary books and they were meant, by the people who wrote them, to be scary books—big brother is watching you all of the time. In China, one of the ugliest communities on earth, there is a camera for every three people and the cameras have the ability to face-identify. So big brother is with us in at least one country on earth and it happens to be the biggest country on earth. If ever I've seen 'big brother is watching' legislation, this most certainly is it.

It is particularly relevant in one of the industries that I come from. I've had cattle all of my life. When the banks take you from 6½ per cent to 29 per cent and you have no ability to protect yourself, then you would think you are entitled—because the law forces that upon me—to dodge the law. I would say that of many of my brother cattlemen—I would put that figure at maybe 25 or 30 per cent—when the banks started screwing them. I repeat the figures. I know the figures because I was a person who borrowed at 6½ per cent and, the year before we sold the St Francis station blocks, I was paying 29 per cent and I can assure you I was not Robinson Crusoe. The banks just take it upon themselves. You've signed a document which is not a contract. There are no obligations on the bank's part. As Henry Bournes Higgins, one of the great jurists in this nation's history, said to the courts: 'A contract made by a single person is not a contract.' You sign a document with the banks and he says they can do anything to you at any time they like and you have no right to do anything to them at all. They can simply take you up through huge interest rates.

In the infamous case which probably had eight million or nine million hits on the internet, the Charlie Phillott case—Charles Phillott is one of the great Australians—he had kept his interest and repayments going. He thought he had a contract to keep interest and repayments going. He went hungry to keep his interest and repayments going. He lived in grinding poverty. He is a very honourable man, a very God-fearing man, a man who has said his prayers every morning and evening on every day of his life, and he felt that, if he had a contract, he had to fulfil it. So he fulfilled what he thought was a contract, but of course there was no contract. It was a contract with one person, not two people, so by definition it wasn't a contract. But he kept what he said was his side of it and the bank just said, 'We don't think that you've got any hope of pulling through. All the banks think your equity is lower than we want your equity to be now, so we're going to sell you up,' which they proceeded to do. It was a case so notorious that it was run twice on 60 Minutes. It got massive nationwide publicity. As I said, there were maybe seven or eight million hits by the time it had run its race. There was the famous letter by David Pascoe, 'Letter to my fellow Australians', which had a picture of Charlie Phillott at the top of the page.

What a cattleman can do is sneak a few head away, sell them and put the cash in his pocket where it can't be found, and he might have some ability to survive and repay the banks. He's still got the debt to the banks, of course, but they can't see his ability to survive. According to the legendary stories I know, the biggest cattle-owning family in Australia got their start doing exactly what I just described during the Great Depression. A First Australian—a ringer—and a lady lived up in the mountains. She took the cattle up the mountains in North Queensland where they couldn't be found and traded by cash. The biggest private drilling operator in Australia, again, traded by cash when they were foreclosing on him in the collapse of the mining industry. But when we were desperately, desperately chasing drillers, when the mining boom came again, thank the good lord, he was there. He had a number of drills and could start the programs that created five of our mines around Charters Towers, which brought in nearly $2½ billion a year into the Australian economy and created 2,000 jobs. It doesn't matter whether it's our cattlemen or whether it's our mining drillers or a thousand other groups of people.

I'll give another example. The owners of a hotel were deeply in debt through no fault of their own. The government closed down the wool industry, the government closed down the railways, and the town in which they had the hotels, of course, had no income at all; there was nothing left. Where there had been five or six sheep stations supporting maybe 10 shearers in the town, now there was one cattle station and no shearers. Cattle stations don't need labour, really. A husband and wife can run a very big cattle station by themselves, or six or seven sheep stations converted to cattle stations. I've given you the case of the driller; I've given you the case of the hotelier. The hotelier survived. Two industries came to the town and we were able to base the workforce in that town and, therefore, provide prosperity for that town that had been massacred by the ALP decision to deregulate the wool industry and by the ALP decision to sell off the railways in Queensland. I'm not saying if the other side had been there it would have been any different; they would have done both in my opinion. It just so happened they weren't there—that's all.

We constantly have the police force wanting to make life easier for themselves. Heaven only knows, they have a hard job to do. Who could blame them? But the government is there to protect the rights of the people. Going back to the grim, horrifying Orwellian spectres of George Orwell in 1984 and Brave New World, can you imagine a society in which the only people allowed to have guns were the people in uniforms? John F. Kennedy, when he had all of the Nobel Prize winners gathered together, said, 'This is the greatest aggregation of intellect the White House has ever seen with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.' He was one of the great intellects of human history, Thomas Jefferson, and he was primarily responsible for drawing up the bill of rights. So every time an intelligent group of people have sat down in human history—including Stephen Langton, William Marshall, who drew up the Magna Carta—they have realised the grave dangers of having a society in which the only people allowed to have arms are the people in uniforms—the government people, the king's people, whatever.

I back up the previous speaker very strongly on the phoenix cases. The Sydney Morning Herald highlighted 14 major cases and in each of those cases ASIC or APRA should have been involved. There was the notorious case of the sugar cane mill at Innisfail. We allocate $100 for every million tonne of cane. So if it is two million tonnes, as this was, it is worth $200 million. It was sold out from under the farmers for $2 million. I cannot go into the details of the case here today, but the person who bought it was the person who had offered $57 million the year before. Through a nice, cosy, little arrangement with the liquidators, they got it for $2 million. So they offered $57 million the year before and, with a nice, cosy, little arrangement, they got it for $2 million and the farmers lost $200 million. To provide further proof of what is going on, that sugar mill was sold two years later for $76 million. I am sure it would have been sold for $150 million except for the fact that they would have probably gone to jail. That would have been so outrageous that maybe then and only then would they have gone to jail. But no-one went to jail. We know what the value of the mill was. We know what it was sold for. We know the dirty dealings that went on behind the scenes.

Now, this is the point: there are people who are paid nearly half a million dollars in salaries at APRA and ASIC. In the case of the sugar mills, the then Treasurer Wayne Swan was so enraged that he took a risk—because it is a risk. It can be argued that you are interfering with the course of justice, but it is his duty to see that justice is done. He insisted that ASIC meet with the representatives of the farmers. He ordered them to not once but three times, and they completely defied him and ignored him. If I were to criticise Wayne—and I think he is one of the finest treasurers since the Second World War; the history books will record that—in this case, he should have ruthlessly and brutally sacked them. If I had been in his place, they would have been recklessly and brutally sacked. Everyone knows my reputation when I was a second-ranking minister when the government fell. There was no doubt that, if you defied justice and those principles that we have to protect ordinary people, if you defied those principals with your lazy stupidity and your callous disregard, then we would get you, and we did. It was not only me but other ministers in that wonderful, much-maligned Bjelke-Petersen government.

By the way, I will just mention in passing, since we are talking about legal things here, that he died penniless. He did not have two bob to rub together. There have been only two members of parliament since the Second World War who have refused to take their superannuation because they believed it was the wrong thing to do. He was one of them. He was penniless and refused to take his superannuation. I know, because I was the person designated by cabinet to plead with him to take something because his family was destitute. He never took a free cup of tea for himself.

Interestingly, easily the most important person in Australian history when we are talking about laws and justice is Edward Granville Theodore. That is not my comment; it is Paul Keating's comment. 'The greatest man in Australia's history' is not my comment; it is Malcolm Fraser's comment. The Liberal Prime Minister described him that way. Edward Granville Theodore was in partnership with Clive Packer, someone who he was very close friends with. They formed the Consolidated Press together. He was the founder of the labour movement in Australia, when it was a very great movement, and we were all very proud to be associated with it in those days. In the history books, he was also referred to by the Mungana scandal, like he was some crook. He is the greatest man in Australian history. But let us set that aside.

These criminals, which the previous Labor speaker referred to, get away with anything they want. 'If it suits us and lines my pocket, then I will sell a $200 million mill that is owned by the farmers for $2 million and get away with it!' (Time expired)

See this speech in context