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

I watched in horror the 60 Minutes segment on the University of Queensland. Unfortunately for me, I have had the dubious privilege of being president of almost every organisation within that university. I was the vice president of the student union for three years. I was president of the law faculty. I was president of the college and president of the combined colleges council.

The University of Queensland has the Maltese cross as its emblem. The 720 knights of St John stood up against the Ottoman Turks who were taking 50,000 Christian slaves a year. Almost everyone in the harems stretching from Portugal through Spain and back to what we now call Turkey was a Christian woman. If you doubt me, the two greatest leaders of the Middle Ages, Peter the Great and Suleiman the Magnificent, both had wives who had been Christian slaves.

The incident spoken of on 60 Minutes bears detailing again. Some idealistic youths—and we hope we always produce idealistic youths—got together. There were about 20 or 30 of them. They had a little demonstration, which was really a meeting; they were just talking to each other. And along came a bunch of thugs. They weren't Australians; they were foreigners, from China. And I do not condemn the Chinese people. Heaven only knows, I'd say probably a fifth of our population in North Queensland have Chinese ancestors, including one of our little party's members of parliament. The youths were bashed by these people. It was on television—the whole thing was recorded. They physically bashed them, pushed one of them over on his back—it was lucky he didn't smash his head down and crack his skull—and kicked all their gear to pieces. The outcome of this was—nothing. Here was a clear-cut case of brutal assault—assault and battery. And it was on television. We know who did it and we could see the actions: totally unprovoked assault and battery. After 11, 12 or 13 months there was no action by the police force.

When I went on the second 60 Minutes and said that I was going to have an inquiry in this place, three of the crossbenchers had the guts to stand up—only three of them—and say that they were going to second the motion. That meant the government didn't have the numbers, so then, and only then, we got a serious inquiry. Was action taken? Yes, it was. There was action taken by the University of Queensland. The names of their senate will go down in infamy, because not one of them has absented himself from the decision. So their names will go down as people who in time of war would be called traitors to their country. That's because they took action—they took action against some Australians who were speaking their mind about the brutality that was taking place by the Chinese government. This wasn't the Chinese people; it was the Chinese government against students in China.

They didn't demonstrate against the Uighurs. It's quite clear that there were 10 million people in that province and now there are only nine million people. The release of satellite photos indicate that the concentration camps—and we know what they mean from the infamous British in the Boer War, from the infamous Turkish murder of a million people in their country during the First World War and, of course, from Hitler—are doubling in size. These boys had the temerity to speak up, as every generation of Australians has spoken up, bravely, courageously and intelligently. And they were punished by the university—punished by their own university. It is supposed to be the cradle of intellectual thought; the protector, the nursery—the womb—of intellectual thought. Here, it was the persecutor of intellectual thought and freedom of thought.

If you stand up, you might be surprised. I'm a nobody; I can just stand up and say, 'I'm going to move in this parliament; the people of North Queensland have given me a voice and I'm going to use that voice to stand up in this parliament and have a fair dinkum inquiry and go after these b-a-s-t-ds with a hatchet upraised'. They are traitors to Australia, and that is not an overstatement. When our country is divided into four parts, the port in the north-western portion is now owned by China. The only development project in that area is the Ord stage 2 and stage 3. The hypocrisy of the Liberal government in condemning Labor on this came when they gave stage 2 and stage 3 to China. I'll repeat that, slowly: that the only development project available in the north-western quadrant, a quarter of Australia, is the Ord stage 2 and stage 3. It was given, not sold—and 31 Australians applied for that water—to China. Not to China—to the Chinese government. I must always make that distinction.

We could talk about 'Dictator Dan', the man who brings us fantasy land. I think watching him is a great comedy show. I can't look at him without laughing. What's his latest fantasy? His first one was the Belt and Road, that the Belt and Road would bring trade to Melbourne. What trade? What's Melbourne going to sell to China? Motorcars, is it? What is it going to sell to China? Oranges? Is it going to sell oranges to China?

So, Belt and Road: yes, it was successful. What it brought in was COVID-19, straight in on the Belt and Road, straight into Melbourne! So Mr fantasy land said, 'Oh, we're going to do something about it.' The rest of Australia are killing themselves laughing. And I feel sorry for you if you're a Victorian. I mean really, I feel sorry for you, because you're the laughing-stock of the country. And of course that leadership—there was some stupid act by we people of Australia giving four years. To quote the great but much-maligned Bjelke-Peterson: if you can't do it in three years, then you're not entitled to four! And that's a good call.

Who owns Australia? Well, we only have three exports now; the rest of them are so small they hardly warrant mentioning. We have only three exports: iron, coal and gas. Let's start with iron. By some miracle—God bless Twiggy Forrest and Fortescue; God bless them. But 60 per cent of our iron is foreign owned. The top six companies mining coal, which account for almost all of our coal exports, are 100 per cent owned by foreign corporations. I'll name the six corporations: Glencore, BHP, Yancoal, Anglo American, Peabody and Whitehaven. Whitehaven is an Australian listed company, but it's majority shareholding is overseas. So, there you go: all six of them are foreign owned. The other huge export item we have is gas, which is probably about $60,000 million or $70,000 million a year. I think the next biggest one might be aluminium or cattle or gold; they're about $10,000 million. So, that's the big three.

Let's have a look at gas. It was sold by the government of Queensland and the government of New South Wales and the federal government of Australia, Liberal and Labor. It was sold holus-bolus for 6c a unit. Mount Isa Mines is going broke because we have to buy our own gas at $16.60 a unit. Who was responsible for that? What, penguins in Antarctica were responsible for that? If you did not have the foresight to see that some of that gas should have been kept for Australia—so: the other huge gas producer in the world is a little tiny country called Qatar. It's one of those backwoods Middle Eastern countries. They sell 107 billion cubic metres, and we sell 105 billion cubic metres. So, we both sell the same amount of gas. Qatar gets $27 billion a year in revenue from that gas. The Australian figure provided to me by the library is $600 million, but I think it's more like about $4,000 million. So, they get $27,000 million, and we're lucky if we get $4,000 million out of the gas.

Who is responsible for this? Penguins in Antarctica? My fellow colleagues in this place, when you go to bed at night and you ask yourself who sold out this country, look in the mirror and you will have your answer. I hope and pray that my grandchildren, when they ask, 'Who did this to us?' will remember that at least one person in this place stood up. And some of my colleagues on the crossbenches have stood up—at least some have stood up.

And it's much worse than that. Our water and sewerage: society cannot exist without water and sewerage. Our water pumps and our sewerage pumps come from China, but they are not bought-off-the-shelf technology; they have to be poured. I know, because the foundry that did a lot of this work in Australia is in Innisfail, the heartland of the electorate I represent. Now, if you have a fight with China, you can't get the parts to pump water into Sydney or Brisbane or wherever. You can't pump the sewage, because you can't get the pumps. And by the time you founder the pieces—you have to pour them in a brass foundry—by the time you've done that, you are talking about weeks and maybe months.

Agriculture is the saddest story of all. The biggest farming operation in Australia is Van Diemen's dairy, owned by China. The second-biggest, and the biggest landowner in Australia, is the AA Company, owned by foreigners. The third-biggest farm in Australia is Cubbie Station, owned by China. The fourth-biggest in Australia is Consolidated, owned by overseas interests—arguably China. The fifth-biggest is Kidman's. Well, we'll leave a question mark over Kidman's. I said at the time when the federal government knocked back the sale to the Chinese company CRED, 'Don't worry about it; straight after the election, CRED will be back wearing a different suit of clothes.' I'm not going to make any accusations; I'll just leave it at that. But bigger than all those put together will be the Ord stage 2 and stage 3, and it was given to China.

You have a very limited amount of time to turn this around. If you're bringing in half a million people from China every year and the Chinese government declare them to remain Chinese citizens, they might become naturalised Australians but the Chinese government is a much more powerful force than Australia. If you cower in your hidey-hole and say, 'Oh, they're too big for us; they'll cut off our exports,' it's a pity you didn't get off your backside and create some experts or create a motor vehicle industry. Jeez, that's hard! All we have to do is say that all vehicles bought under a government contract will be Australian made, and you have yourself a motor vehicle industry. All you have to do is build two giant oil refineries and bring in ethanol, as Brazil did, and you can get all your petrol from Australia. So don't worry too much about the $100 billion that goes to China. You can replace that tomorrow if you get off your backside and develop your country. If you say it can't be done, I note that when England joined the common market 30 per cent of our exports vanished, and Jack McEwen—I sit under his picture—went out there and got those new markets for us in Asia. The VIP countries are almost as big as China—Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. (Time expired)

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