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

I've played a prominent role in the matter of Drew Pavlou. This very heroic young man who has suffered for his beliefs and been punished for his beliefs stands as an outstanding example of martyrdom. I use that word with forethought. He's had three years of his life taken from him and destroyed. Why did he have three years of his life taken off him? He spent three years doing a university degree, and they abolished all his rights to those three years. They took three years off him. You could be imprisoned for three years for assault and battery, which brings me to the actual incident that brought him to national attention. I knew nothing about this whatsoever until my staff forced me to watch 60 Minutes, which showed a bunch of Chinese thugs bashing this fellow because he had a little forum of about 20 people in which they were talking about the Hong Kong students and what was going on in China. It's not the Chinese people. It is an imperialist dictatorial totalitarian regime. Don't have any illusions about what we're talking about here. I'm old enough to remember Communism, and there's not the slightest whiff of Communism in here, I can tell you. This is not the Communist class or the downtrodden workers and peasants rising up; this is the Mandarin class reasserting themselves. We're back to the days of brutal monarchy in China.

The last thing in the world you do with dictatorial, expansionist, imperialist people is appease them. Have we learnt nothing from the Second World War and the murder of six million Jews, amongst many other atrocities? For those of you who don't read history books—and it seems to me a lot of people in this place don't read history books—let me just refresh your memory. Hitler was given half of Czechoslovakia to appease him. That lightweight imbecile with the moustache and the upper-class English accent said: 'Peace in our time. I have brought peace in our time, by giving away half of Czechoslovakia—the Sudetenland.' He didn't say that. He said: 'I've got peace in our time. I've achieved it for you.' You only have to have the most cursory reading of history to know that the last thing you do with an aggressor is appease him. You make him stronger. You make him a hero in his homeland. You make them all xenophobic, beating their chests and saying, 'We are the greatest race on earth.' That's what you do.

These people who are ruling China and suppressing the Chinese people have picked a fight, and I want my nation to know we're not fighting alone here. The oppression of the Islamic people—a million people are missing in the Western Turkestan province. Have they gone to heaven? They probably have gone to heaven. A million people are missing. We have the aerial photographs of the concentration camps. How much evidence do you need before you wake up to yourself? How much evidence did they need in Germany?

I'm holding up a book called The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku. He's 100 years old. He survived the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler. Those people who appeased him are condemned for all of history.

Are we appeasing China? China has cut off our coal. Have we done anything in retaliation? Nope. We've rolled over like mongrel dingoes. That's what we've done. We haven't taken one single action in retaliation. We're just going to accept it. They know they can come in and do what they like and get away with it.

Let me return to the specific case of the university, the cradle of thinking and the creation of thought. Socrates, Aristotle and Plato were the foundations of university. They would talk to young men and try to impart their wisdom. The getting of wisdom was what universities were about. When I went there they argued politics and religion around the clock. You'd finish at five o'clock in the morning sometimes.

What happened to the University of Queensland? Twenty of them had a little meeting, demonstration or forum—whatever you want to call it. When they were talking about the suppression of their fellow students in Hong Kong a bunch of thugs bashed them up. It's on television. You can watch it. This person was clearly Chinese. He had a furious look on his face. It was really scary. He came straight at Pavlou and smashed him and smashed the gear. The other thugs were pushing, bashing and shoving. They closed down the meeting with brute force. It was clearly assault and battery. There's not the slightest question about that.

Were they punished? No. There was no action taken by the police for 13 months. I'll tell you why the police acted. Because there were enough people on the government side with the guts to say they were going to second the motion for an inquiry into what had occurred at the University of Queensland. There was going to be a proper inquiry at the throat of the University of Queensland Senate and at the throat of the vice-chancellor and his supporters, who sold their souls for a few thousand students from China. I might sell my soul, but I would sell it for a lot more than that. Obviously they're prostitutes—no, they're not prostitutes, because prostitutes sell only their body. These people sold their bodies, souls and minds to China.

Not only are they getting away with it but in Adelaide Simon Birmingham greeted Vice-Chancellor Hoj like he was a conquering hero. I was reading Mark Latham's book. Mark Latham, of all people, expressed in his book what he thought about Simon Birmingham. I enjoyed that section of his book immensely. But Simon Birmingham, a minister in this government, is out there touting for the infiltration of this nation

The Prime Minister himself when Treasurer said Global Switch was to be cut out from information access of the Australian Defence Force. As my colleague Andrew Wilkie said in the parliament, you couldn't make this up. That body holds the information that is to protect this nation, with key information as to where every soldier is at this moment, where every submarine is at this moment and where every fighter aircraft is at this moment. That information is in that computer system. The secretary of defence wrote us all a letter saying that we don't have to worry because they've got really tight security around the building, so no Australians can get into the building. But China owns the building! They are the information system! My honourable colleague Andrew Wilkie said, 'You couldn't make this up! No-one would believe it.'

They're still there. The government has taken no action on it. They have left the one nation on earth which is a rogue nation—well, its government is a rogue nation, not the people: a rogue government—in charge of the access to all our defence systems. They haven't even claimed to have firewalls in there. When the defence secretary wrote to all of us he didn't even claim that there were firewalls in there. But, if there were firewalls, they're just a joke. The most sophisticated secret services on earth are in China. Do we think a firewall is going to stop them or even slow them down? Of course not. But he didn't even claim that there was a firewall in there.

In Theophanous versus The Herald and Weekly Times, the High Court held unanimously that the free flow of information between citizens is the most basic precept of democracy. If you can cut off the flow of information then you're halfway to a totalitarian dictatorship. Those aren't my words, they're the words of the chief judicial people of high standing in this nation. Now, the person who most represents the suppression of freedom of speech in this country is Vice-Chancellor Hoj of The University of Queensland.

I want to make another point in passing here: when I was on campus I was president of the law faculty, president of my college and president of the combined colleges council, and I was vice president of the student's union for three years. If there was one thing that was alive and well at The University of Queensland then, it was freedom of speech. We were proud of that and we were proud of the fact that the emblem of The University of Queensland is actually the Maltese cross. That's where 740 knights of St John said: 'It's all over red rover for you Ottoman Turks. You've taken 50,000 Christian slaves a year and you've taken 10,000 little children, when they're 10 years of age, to become your Janissaries. Your harems speak Serb-Croat; they don't speak Turkish, because all of the women in there aren't Turks.'

If you doubt what I'm saying, the two great leaders of medieval history were the Peter the Great and Suleiman the Magnificent. You don't get called Suleiman the Magnificent unless you're pretty outstanding and you don't get called 'the Great' unless you're pretty outstanding. Both of them had very romantic love affairs with a wife. In Suleiman the Magnificent's case it was Roxanne. Both their wives were Christian slaves who had been freed—who they freed. That gives some idea of the extent of what was taking place.

So those 740 knights stood up against an invading army of 46,000 of the greatest troops on earth; they had defeated every single army in Europe at one time or another. But they said: 'We will stand up and show the courage. We believe in freedom and Malta will stay free from the suppression of the Islamic Ottoman Turks.' There were 245,000 people in Suleiman's armies. They had been besieging the capital of Europe, and guess who won? It was the 740 knights! When St Elmo went down there were 6½ thousand dead on the walls of St Elmo. When the commander looked up at the fortress of St Michael, he said, 'If the child cost us so much, what is the parent going to cost us?' And he cost them plenty!

But that is the symbol of The University of Queensland—a symbol for people of incredible bravery. When you see the Maltese cross, believe me—and I know who the person was who put that Maltese cross there—and you read that story, you will have never heard such a story of heroism as in the battle of Malta and the Maltese cross and the crusaders and the knights of St John.

Ironically, it is a symbol for a university in Australia that suppressed freedom, that punished a person who was there as an Australian talking and was bashed up by China. There was no action taken until— (Time expired)

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