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

I can't agree with the previous speaker; I consider the Victorian Premier better than a comedy hour! Watch him; he's in fantasyland. It's fascinating. I enjoy him immensely. There is a bloke that does not live in the same world as the rest of Australia.

There were 220,000 backpackers in Australia when COVID hit. Half of those, according to the ABS, were employed in agriculture. When I say in agriculture, I refer to how one of my parliamentary chiefs of staff said they had hotels in Hughenden, and their backpackers were classed as rural employees. Of course, in a very real sense, they are. That's a cattle area and, when the cattle people come to town, they stay overnight, so in a very real sense they're employees. According to statistics, by June of this year there will be no backpackers at all in Australia, so where do we get 50,000 workers from? I truly don't know.

The hotel in Atherton—and I stay there because I enjoy all the partying of all the backpackers—had 92 backpackers stay there, but every farmer who's short of a worker just rings up the BV, or the Barron Valley, as it's called, and they will get workers out on the farm. That hotel has pioneered backpacker accommodation and backpackers as a source of workers in the area. Also, they are young people and they create an atmosphere. They swim in the big pool right in the centre of Cairns, and it's really great fun for young people.

I think this crisis has brought an issue to a head. Up until last year, I reckon everyone had the freedom that, if they didn't want to work, they didn't have to work. Well, yes, you have the right not to work, but you have no right to take money off the people that are working. If a bloke wants to lounge around all day, watching the television, he doesn't take work off some poor beggar that has to get up at 7.30 in the morning, spend an hour or half an hour getting to work and half an hour getting home in the afternoon. He should not be paying for you to sit at home all day and watch the television. We're looking at about 20 per cent of the Australian work force fitting into that category. They're hiding among the disabled. They're hiding in the university and education sector. They're hiding all over the place. If you compare the people that were working—my generation, but even the generation below me—with the people that are working now, there's a hell of a lot of them just simply hiding out. Disability is one of the great places to hide out. I think we've arrived at that point.

Where I find the Premier of Victoria absolutely fascinating—they put people in quarantine in the centre of a city. The last place on the planet that you put people is in the centre of a rabbit warren city! Of course our government in Queensland has done exactly the same thing, so—surprise, surprise!—we've got an outbreak.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

I have finished what I needed to say.

Sitting suspended from 18:20 to 18 : 30

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