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

I come from North Queensland. North Queensland is like Tasmania. There is no town in North Queensland that is within 400 kilometres of the nearest town. Mackay and Sarina are near enough to 400 kilometres from Rockhampton. Charters Towers is 400 kilometres from Emerald. Mount Isa and Cloncurry are 400 kilometres from Hughenden and Longreach. So we're an island.

The area below Charters Towers is called the Desert Uplands, and I won't go into the reasons—the geography or anything of that nature. But it's just that we are a very, very isolated region, and we identify very strongly as North Queenslanders. Most people from North Queensland are told, 'You're from Queensland.' They'll say, 'No, I'm from North Queensland!'

We are an area like Tasmania. The area should have been cut off immediately.

I'm very experienced in dealing with plant disease outbreaks. I went through the citrus canker, the papaya fruit fly and the black sigatoka. I went through each of those, and also bluetongue outbreaks in cattle and various other similar diseases in livestock. What you immediately do is cordon off the contagion area or cordon off the clean areas. That hasn't been done in Queensland. In fact, almost every single case that we have had in North Queensland has come from Brisbane. Instead of cordoning off the clean area, they locked us into the unclean area. In fact, we were locked into the high contagion area of Australia—South-East Queensland—against our will. That in itself is bad enough, but when I see the people who are advocating all these draconian conditions in Queensland, when I look at them, I can't help but be reminded of the famous comment by the foreign affairs minister in the 1800s in Russia. When he received word that Russia had taken Tashkent, he said, 'What in hell's name are we interested in taking Tashkent for?' But then he also said, 'I must admit, I had a terrific erotic impulse when I learned the news.' I think a lot of people here are getting very, very excited by the power, prestige and notoriety that they are getting at the expense of my homeland, which has a million people—it's not as if North Queensland is small; a million people live there, which is twice the population of Tasmania and almost the population of South Australia, and it's a rapidly growing area.

The last case we had must go on the public record. There is person out there advocating the most draconian measures, which are having quite an horrific effect on the First Australian communities of North Queensland. One community is now rioting continuously, another community is holding demonstrations and a third community is about to explode because the police—be it wise, good or bad—picked up three young blokes. The courts fined them $1,300. This is in the paper. Of course, they couldn't pay it, so they went to jail. For those of you who don't know much about the history of Queensland, there was the infamous 'act', the Aboriginal affairs act. It was called 'the act', and there were many books written about it. For almost 100 years you could not go onto a community reserve or leave one without the permission of the superintendent, who was a white fella. Well, now they're saying, 'The act is back again.'

The person imposing these draconian measures will not protect us by isolation. Almost every single doctor in North Queensland has signed a document petitioning for the quarantining and protection of North Queensland—almost every single doctor. I'm excluding the doctors employed by the government; obviously they're not going to sign. They would lose their jobs immediately, of course. And I'm excluding the temporary doctors who have come in from overseas, but, outside of them, I think they're up to 120 or 130 doctors who have signed up. That's almost every single doctor. But does Brisbane taking any notice of this? No.

I'm getting to the important point. The draconian measures imposed upon us are costing us lives now with cabin fever. I don't have to explain that to the House that there's a downside to this, a very serious downside. Everyone will notice that mental health issue have gone up and up and up. But the person imposing this sent an officer of her department, the health department, from Brisbane, a high contagion area, into the greatest fortress of defence that we have in northern Australia, the Cairns Base Hospital. It's the biggest hospital in northern Australia, and she sent an employee of the health department into that hospital without checking whether that person was contagion free. Well, that person wasn't, and we had an outbreak of the disease in the very fortress of protection that we need: the biggest hospital in northern Australia—not North Queensland; northern Australia. So when you tell us that we've got to lock down like this, yet you apply none of those principles to yourself, and you light up the most important bastion of protection that we have, then please excuse me for thinking that there's a double standard operating here.

For the 400th time I plead with the federal government. If, when we have a pandemic covering the nation that has the potential, on the basis of Britain or Italy or Spain, of 4,000 or 5,000 lives being lost, you say that the federal government has no responsibilities, you don't understand the Australian Constitution. Or you may say that health is the subject of the state governments. It's not when you have a nationwide pandemic. I'm not going into the legal arguments here. I haven't got time. I would like to canvass them, but I can't do that tonight. I would ask the federal government please to carry out your responsibilities and put pressure on the state government for regional quarantining, as we do for plants and vegetables, as we do for livestock. You cordon off the contagion area or, if it's widespread, you cordon off the clean areas. Obviously, Tasmania and North Queensland should leap to your mind, and arguably south-western Australia and probably the Northern Territory, when you say 'cordoning off'. Then you know you've got these areas that are clean.

We had a talk—which is public, so I'm not telling tales out of school—from the health authorities in Townsville. They gave us the figures from the Townsville hospital. They put their normal monthly application in for three items, and they got 100 per cent. In the gloves and masks and gowns, which you desperately need for protection, there was only 30 and 40 per cent of their normal assignment. And in the critical area of antiseptics and wash-downs and sanitisers, there was zero. There's no excuse for this. The Dalby ethanol plant has opened up. Arguably, the best killer of germs on the planet is ethanol. Listerine mouthwash is ethanol, for example. They've reopened the plant, and 60 million litres a year can come out of that plant, so there's no excuse for anywhere in Australia not having access to antiseptics. But our northern facilities have been stripped and the weapons we need to fight this virus have been sucked into the south-east corner, so not only have you given us no protection but you have taken the protection we normally have away from us. I didn't complain about that for two months because they had the contagion and we didn't. But you've given us the contagion, so I'm squealing long and loud at this stage. You've given us the contagion and you've taken away our weapons to fight the contagion. There's no excuse for it. The Dalby ethanol plant, the second biggest plant in Australia, was producing no litreage at all; it was closed down. You've reopened it. David Szymczak, God bless him, and United Petroleum reopened it, and they're going to full production of 60 million litres a year.

I come to the issue we're discussing here, the app. There are very powerful reasons for voting for this, and I don't criticise anyone for doing so, but I'm not going to vote for it. When I went to school, all of us, to my horror, had to read two books: Brave New World and 1984. There's great justification for the draconian powers being exercised, and I pay the governments full credit for moving swiftly and imposing those draconian measures, but now it's a matter of long-term freedoms. I think we're in a different ballpark here. There have been many times in history when we have given away—sacrificed—our freedoms, and there's always a reason for that. Often, at times, there's a very good reason why your freedom should be sacrificed, but those reasons do not look really good in the longer term of human history. I have taken great delight in doing press on this and saying: 'Don't worry, because we have a politician's promise that they're not going to use this tracking of every second of your life that they now have on record for nefarious purposes and there will be a cut-off point somewhere in the future. You've got a politician's promise!' Every time I've said that, I've been greeted with laughter, because it's funny—a politician's promise! But it's the only protection that we have from going into Orwellian's brave new world in George Orwell's 1984or into Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I was a very young man when I read them. I was 16 or 17 years of age, and I was petrified with fear. To this very day I am still petrified with fear. For those of you who like movies, you might drop along and see The Shining where the bloke goes berserk on account of cabin fever. But I doubt there are too many members in this place who haven't heard the stories of cabin fever. We've had one young man hang himself and another person attempt suicide, that I know of. No-one is running around and publicising these things.

I'm the last person on the planet to be an admirer of Donald Trump, although in some areas I do, but his statement is a very valid statement: you must consider what you are sacrificing and what you are getting from these sacrifices. There is a balance here. Quite frankly, I'm not going to go on the app, and, if you want to throw me in jail, well, throw me in jail. In this place, just remember that history judges you. As a person who wrote a moderately best-selling history book, I can tell you that they can judge you very, very harshly indeed.

In the short time left I want to end on a positive note. We are an area that can be cut off. We are contagion free. You want your giant projects, because you've got to go into public works now. You have a depression, and the only way you can work your way out of a depression is with public works. If you absorb money in public works, you're going to bankrupt your country. You've got to have money-making projects. The Galilee rail line, the transmission line of copper, and Hells Gate Dam—there are three giant projects sitting there waiting to happen, and this is the moment in which they should happen. America did wonderful things during the Great Depression and we did nothing—sorry, we put a rock wall around the gardens in Balmain! That's what we did during the Great Depression. Let us not repeat that in this coronavirus depression. (Time expired)

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