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

One of my two best friends on the planet, Ron Purse, rang me the other night. He's lived most of his life nearly 300 kilometres from the nearest town. He and I owned half a million acres together at one stage, and he owned many hundreds of thousands quite separately in some good country. He said, 'Mate, I'm doing the right thing—staying at home, not doing anything wrong.' I think he was quite proud of that when he told me that. The only thing that really has beaten this has been moral suasion. The governments have said, 'It's the wrong thing to do, so stay at home, please,' and people have stayed at home.

In North Queensland, where I come from and the honourable member for Dawson comes from, we are 400 kilometres away from any other part of Australia. We're like Tasmania; we're a separate island. As the honourable member for Dawson will tell you, Mackay and surrounds are 350 or 400 kilometres from Rockhampton. Longreach is 300 kilometres from Hughenden or Mount Isa. We have never had coronavirus. The only cases we've had are those where someone's come up from Brisbane or come in on a cruise ship that came up to North Queensland. There's not been a case of anyone actually getting the disease in North Queensland. We've been nearly three months without the disease, yet the honourable member for Dawson and the honourable member for Kennedy have watched their entire tourism industry be completely destroyed.

The Premier of Queensland is still sitting there saying, 'No, no; you can't have any tourists.' It's alright for the Gold Coast; they get tourists from Brisbane. We don't; we get our tourists from outside of North Queensland. You're not allowed to travel any further than—I don't know what it is at the present moment—and the consequences have been disastrous for us. Yes, we have the coal industry, as the member for Dawson and I are both well aware. Yes, we have the magnificent mining region, the north-west minerals province. Yes, we do have those things. We have the sugar industry, we have a cattle industry—it's not really big by the standards of the coal industry or the sugar industry—and we have the tourism industry, which may be our second- or third-biggest employer, and it's being completely destroyed as we talk.

We have not had a case of coronavirus in something like three months now, and the only cases we've had—I see the honourable member for Dawson is nodding—have been in people who've come up from down south. The last case we had—and it bears mentioning—was a state government employee who was ordered to go from Brisbane to the Cairns base hospital. The greatest fortress of protection in North Queensland, in northern Australia, is the Cairns base hospital. They sent a person completely untested, with no testing whatsoever—our football team has got to be tested, but they can send their employees up—and she lights up the Cairns base hospital. So there is one set of rules for the rest of us in Queensland and another set of rules for the state government. They play by their own rules.

But for this to go on now is most serious. I don't know how many deaths we've had in Queensland—10, 15 or whatever it is. I know of one death that is directly attributable to the lockdown; I have had another death reported to me. I know of two attempted suicides as a result of the lockdown. Now, if I know that, there have got to be 20 or 30, or maybe 50, out there. So, every day that you continue, you are costing lives. It's the other way around now: with the continuation of this lockdown, you are costing lives. I'm quite happy to stand up anywhere and describe it in detail. I think I've got permission; I'll just have to confirm that in writing from the family of the person that died as a result of the lockdown.

I want to switch to my First Australian cousin brothers. They are locked up. They're not locked down; they're locked up. Yarrabah is the biggest First Australian community in Australia. There are nearly 4,000 people; arguably there are over 4,000 people. They're completely surrounded by a very high mountain range with dense jungle. The only way out is a road that has been cut over the top of the mountain. Since very few of them have cars and all communications have been stopped, even if they attempted to walk through the jungle over the mountain, which is maybe 2,000 feet high—they could get out by boat, but the state government is patrolling the waters with police boats, so they are locked up.

A lot of them are old enough to remember that when the Country Party took government in Queensland there was the infamous Aborigines Act—and it was infamous. It was notorious in Australia. You could not go into a community or out of a community without the permission of the superintendent, which was exactly the same title used by the head of a prison at the time. He could apply corporal punishment to you at his discretion. He could put you on bread and water for nine days. But let me go to probably the most pernicious aspect of the act: you weren't allowed to leave. You were locked up.

It's exactly the same situation now at Yarrabah. You are locked up. These communities don't have a shopping centre. A normal town of 4,000 people would have quite a substantial shopping centre. I think little Julia Creek has about 30 shops. In Yarrabah, sometimes a shop opens up and closes, but the last time I was there, yes, there was a little coffee shop and there was a supermarket. There were two shops. So they've got nothing there, unless you want a coffee or something from a tiny supermarket, which we'd call a corner store anywhere else. They do all their shopping in Gordonvale, which is only 20 minutes away by motor car, or in Cairns, which is about 25 or 30 minutes away. But now they're locked up.

Because they've been locked up, there has been rioting at Aurukun. There have been continuous demonstrations at Yarrabah. There has been a death in one of the western communities. There are three boys, according to the newspapers, that have been locked up in jail because they snuck into Doomadgee, into their homes—they wanted to get home—and they were fined $1,300. They couldn't pay the fine, so they went to jail. People are being locked up, people are dying, people are rioting, people are demonstrating, and the state government continues to have them locked up.

Many of you will know that I often identify as a First Australian. I'm not going to go into why, how or wherefore, but I will often speak in the first person. When I heard that we First Australians were going to be locked up—everyone else is locked down, but we're being locked up—I have to tell you my emotional reaction was to say: 'What are we? Some sort of monkey species or something, are we? Everyone else can get to do something, but we're locked up. We're not even allowed to go down to the shop. We're locked up.' I just felt that this was totally racial discrimination.

If you want the specifics of it, I went down to the last demonstration at Yarrabah, which was on the national news. There was a whitefella driving a truck in. He's got a contract to supply goods to the supermarket, I think. There was a black bloke standing behind me and he said: 'See that whitefella in the truck? I have exactly the same contract as he's got, but, because I'm black, I'm not allowed to drive my truck in there. But the whitefella is allowed to drive his truck in there.' I let it go for six weeks, and then I started to question it. They said: 'Don't you understand diabetes? Don't you understand the dangers of overcrowding?' I said, politely at first, 'No, you don't understand the dangers of diabetes, because if you did you would have given us back the market gardens which you, the Labor government, took off every single community when you came into power in 1990! All 28 of the communities had market gardens so that we could overcome the malnutrition that causes diabetes, but you couldn't care less.' Look, the Prime Minister has promised me, or his office has promised me, that something will happen on the issue of market gardens. But, with all due respect to the government, 15 months ago I was promised the money for market gardens and there has not even been a discussion with a nutritionist or an agrostologist or a farming contractor—not even that. So don't tell me you're worried about diabetes!

As to the second issue—that is, overcrowding—well, the federal government has called off the housing program. So that's a nice piece of hypocrisy here! (Time expired.)

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