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

Each successive Closing the Gap report has shown that we are falling short of closing the gap. For those that are not aware, I am the longest-serving minister for First Australians in the history of the Queensland parliament, and I wasn't there for all that long. They don't last very long.

I have often wondered why our administration of the First Australians has been so absolutely appallingly bad. There is a recent book by Professor Sarah Maddison—Deputy Dean of Political Science and History at Melbourne University, one of the four sandstone universities, and a highly distinguished academic—The Colonial Fantasy: Why White Australia Can't Solve Black Problems. I have an enviable reputation for enormous success in that portfolio in Queensland. Everyone watched 60 Minutes in those days; its watching audience was unbelievable. We had five 60 Minutes in that period of time. In those last three years, we were effectively hitting our straps. I was a super hero.

Before everyone starts thinking I'm getting carried away with myself, I should say that I deserve none of that credit—none whatsoever. When I read this book, I thought, 'Well, why were we so successful?' It was because every single decision I made, it wasn't actually me that made it. I said, 'Let's go to the blackfellas and ask them.' There is a problem, because really you have to be one of those people to be able to get them to communicate with you. I see it again and again. People say, 'Oh, they didn't say anything. They didn't get back to us.' 'But you're not our race. You are a foreign'—I use the word 'invader' with question marks, but you're foreign in every way to these people. I'm not. When I got the ministry and I was asked, 'What are your qualifications for this job?' I said, 'Quite frankly, it's because I've played rugby league all of my life.' It's pretty hard to feel superior to someone after he's buried your face down nine times on a football oval. I think it was a good call.

So let me be very specific. I asked Greg Wallace, who has two of those 60 Minutes programs. It was the first time 60 Minutes had ever done a repeat program, because of the enormous positive sentiment that swept out of his first interview. Greg is an extremely quiet person. He is one of the Rosendales in North Queensland. The vast bulk of Australia's population of First Australians is in North Queensland. The Rosendales are the most prominent family. Lester Rosendale is a very close friend of mine. He was on the Napranum Aboriginal Shire Council. He was elected as one of the two from Queensland every year—for nearly 20 years, I think. So They're the dominant family. Most of you will know Noel Pearson's name. He is a Rosendale, the first Aboriginal person in Australian history elected to parliament—Eric Deeral—was a Rosendale.

This Greg Wallace I'm talking about is a Rosendale. I could go on. But let me just say that Greg Wallace was No. 2 on our Senate list. When Greg did the interview, being announced as a Senate candidate, he said: 'When I was CEO at Napranum, all CEOs in Cape York were black. Now all the CEOs are white. You've gone backwards. When I was CEO at Napranum, we had 36,000 head of cattle in Cape York. Now we have none. When I was CEO at Napranum, we had the rights to timber, to water and to quarrying. Now we have no rights to timber, no rights to water and no rights to quarrying. When I was CEO at Napranum, we had 2,000 jobs in Work for the Dole in Cape York. Now we have none. When I was CEO at Napranum, 700 of those Work for the Dole jobs were in house building. Now the jobs don't exist and the house building program doesn't exist. When I was CEO at Napranum, We had market gardens on every community. Now there are no market gardens. When I was CEO at Napranum, whitefellas were allowed to drink and blackfellas were allowed to drink. Now we have racial laws and only whitefellas are allowed to drink.

He said that the net result of that, of course, was that they couldn't get jobs. What he meant by that was that if they got a conviction they couldn't get a blue card, and if they couldn't get a blue card in Queensland they couldn't get a government job. My son, who is a state member of parliament, rants and rails about the blue cards all the time. In one community—one of the biggest First Australians communities in Australia—every single adult woman cannot get a blue card except for two. About 2,000 or 3,000 people live in that community and all of them have criminal charges. Did anyone stop drinking in the United States when they banned alcohol? No! All the politicians who voted against it were down at the speakeasies, and that's a matter of public record.

The government has imposed a prohibition, but the net result of that is that happening in all community areas in Queensland—and about 25,000 people living community areas—so that's for all of our 'proper' black population. I claim to be a blackfella, but I'm not a proper blackfella. There are leading Australian spokesmen who I would not consider to be blackfellas in the sense that I mean it.

Now, he did not mention that you could get a title deed, that you could actually own your own piece of land. In North Queensland, where most of the First Australian population of Australia are concentrated, we have 3½ million hectares of land. Or, more accurately, we had—past tense—3½ million hectares of land. By the simple device of walking in, getting a form at the council chambers, filling it out accurately with a description of the land that you wanted, handing it in and putting in $20, if the community council did not object over a two-month period, then the title deed was sort of automatically issued. So at Yarrabah, you went in and filled out a form. There were two council meetings and you now owned two acres of land, which is now worth $300,000. So you've gone from being a poor old pauper-stricken blackfella who isn't worth two bob to being worth $300,000.

Well, who was poorer? Was anyone in Australia poorer because of that two acres—which was of their own land which has never, ever been taken off them? That was thanks to the missionaries, I might add. The much maligned Christians are the only reason that any of us still exist; we'd have all been murdered or raped out of existence. That is a matter of public record, and it's not very pretty to say that but the fact is that it's true. But we were Christians who came to this country, and we believed in Christianity. We said, 'No one is going to do this to these people.' We protected them in the community areas and we provided market gardens for them so that they would have the nutritional requirements that they need for good health. The market gardens are gone and the nutritional requirements have gone. And I'll just mention three extremely ugly facts.

If First Australians proper—not people like me, but real fair dinkum blackfellas; and I'm not confining that to community areas, I'm saying real fair dinkum blackfellas—if we are an identifiable group, then we have the highest incarceration rates on earth. That's of any identifiable group on earth. If we are a separate and identifiable group, we have the highest stolen children rate on the earth, and the least life expectancy— (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 11:54

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