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

I don't get much of an opportunity to follow the media, so I don't know what's happening in the world, but I jumped into a car and ABC radio was on, and I was quite shocked to find out that China and Russia are meeting to discuss Taiwan and the Ukraine. As a person who is a published historian, which I'm very proud of, I take the keenest of interest in history. Jeez! If you can't learn from the past, you will suffer a repeat of the past. Russia and China are talking about Taiwan and the Ukraine. I was speaking to one of the three or four senior ministers in the government, and I said, 'I can't believe this—Taiwan and the Ukraine.' He said, 'Sudetenland and Austria.' There was a bloke called Adolf Hitler who said, 'All I want is Austria,' and two weeks later he said, 'All I want is the Sudetenland,' and two weeks later he said, 'All I want is Czechoslovakia,' and two weeks later it was Poland and then Russia. Well, if this is not a repeat of that!

Please. You are dicing with death here—the death of our nation. You live in an empty land. Take a 100-kilometre-wide strip starting at Cairns and going down through the golden nulla-nulla—Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Take that out and dot it around Darwin. There are a million people living in a land the size of Brazil or the contiguous United States, almost as big as China and almost twice the size of the European Union. There's no-one living there.

You say: 'What? Are the Chinese going to invade?' They already have, under your stinking free trade agreement. When Prime Minister Tony Abbott stood up and clapped Andrew Robb, I said: 'He just signed his death warrant. They'll be gone within six months.' Within three months he was gone. You think the Australian people are so stupid, but they can see you out there signing these agreements and then telling us that it's a wonderful thing for us. Do you think we're so dumb? You say: 'What? They're going to invade us, are they?' Well, they're already in Darwin. Under the free trade agreement, they can bring in as many people as they like for a project—not a new project but a project. They are already. I'm not going to denigrate people, but the senior minister in the government gave the Ord stage 2 and stage 3 to China—gave. Thirty-one Australians applied for the water, and they gave stage 2 and stage 3. Well, alright—they've taken back stage 3. But they still have stage 2, which will probably be the biggest farming operation in Australia. But they own four of the other five big farming operations, the biggest farming operations in Australia.

Let me give you a geography lesson. Darwin is the port into northern Australia. Outside of the coal port at Abbot Point and Mackay Port, there are no ports in northern Australia outside of Darwin. The Ord is about one-third of the way to Perth. They own the Merredin airbase in Perth. The Merredin airbase was sold to China. Guess where the terminus is of the east-west railway line and the east-west highway—Merredin. It's 100 kilometres this side of Perth. They have the airbase, they have the water development, and they have the Port of Darwin. I don't know how many mines they own or how many pastoral companies they own or how much landmass they own, but it's a very substantial proportion. I said to the state member, who represents two-thirds of the northern surface area of Western Australia, 'How much of it do we still own?' And she said, 'About nil. We blackfellas are supposed to own some of it, but we're not allowed to use it, so forget about that.' It's almost all foreign owned. I said, 'By China?' She said, 'Yeah, probably predominantly.' That's from the member.

Who is responsible for this? What, were there penguins in Antarctica? That's a quote from a judge at Nuremberg, by the way. 'No, I was just taking orders; I just had to go along with what the government was doing.'—when you are the government! And the ALP—you were the government! You probably will be the government in a few months time. Are you going to do anything about it? Looking at your record, I would say that there's as much chance of a snowflake in hell as you doing anything about Darwin.

The most prominent leaders in this government said that they were going to do something about Darwin. They said they were going to do something about Global Switch. They said they were going to do something about universities, the Drew Pavlou incident, which was a day of shame for this nation. They were going to do something about missiles. They were going to do something submarines. They were going to do something about fuel security. Fuel security! I contacted the government at the highest level and said that all the trucks were going off the road in Townsville. I mean, a candidate for the KAP in Townsville had to be the person in Australia to blow the whistle on AdBlue. If you think China's not going to have a go at you, have a look at AdBlue. Every truck in Australia over eight tonnes has to have liquid urea, which is called AdBlue, in its petrol tank or is in very serious breach of the law. We were due to run out of AdBlue in the first week of February. The government officially informed in writing that they had it all under control. The first time they said they had it all under control. The second time they said that they had it all under control and they were setting up a task force—and every truck in Australia.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I rang up the biggest livestock hauliers in Australia, one of the biggest trucking operations in the country, and he screamed abuse and obscenities at me on the telephone. He said, 'You're supposed to be members of parliament, and every truck in Australia is about to cease operation.' Then I rang up the biggest mover of fruit and vegetables in Australia. I got a similar blast off him. How could a government not know that every truck in Australia was about to cease operation? And if you think China is harmless, they were just going to give us a little touch up and let us know who's the boss because they control the supply of liquid urea into Australia.

I will be moving the amendment to the bill, seconded by my very excellent colleague from Tasmania. But I want to say to the government that talked about Darwin. You were going to fix that up, but it's owned by China. You talked about Global Switch. You were going to fix that up. You talked about the Queensland university and the Drew Pavlou incident—Chinese influence. You had an inquiry. Yeah, that's what you do when you don't want to know. You're going to do something about missiles; you're going to do something about submarines; you're going to do something about fuel security; and you're going to do something about AdBlue.

Let me go to fuel security. We on the crossbenches might disagree violently on a lot of things, but at least we can come together for the good of the country. We're not here for shouting matches and proving the other blokes are the bad guys and I'm the good guy. We can work together, and we have formulated legislation. How could you possibly live in a country that is in the most perilous situation, with 25 million predominantly Europeans living in the middle of Asia on probably the richest resource nation in the world outside of Peru and the United States, I suppose. The empty part of Australia contains all of the iron ore and almost all of the coal. It contains all of our gold, silver, lead, zinc, uranium and aluminium. Is there anything else that we export? Yes, there is. Cattle! It's all in that empty area as well. And they're already here. They've got Darwin. They've got the Ord. They've got Merredin. They're already here. They don't have to knock on your door. They're already inside the house.

I'll go back to fuel security. If China embargoes our fuel—and don't say they don't do it because they already did it, with AdBlue. That is something that has to go in every fuel tank as part of our fuel in Australia, and China just cut it off in one hit. If you can't get the message, then you are very stupid, and future generations of our country will curse you. I tell you: they will curse you. So, when we raised the issue of fuel security—it was mostly the crossbenchers; it most certainly wasn't the opposition that raised the issue of fuel security—again and again and again, eventually, you had an inquiry. Then you said, 'Right oh, we admit we need emergency supplies.' You put the emergency supplies in the United States! And in a way I sort of love you for it because, in any conversation I am in, the government is the laughing stock. You put the emergency supply of fuel in the United States. If you do not have a globe at home, then get one and you will find that the United States is on the exact other side of the globe from Australia. That's where our emergency tanks are. And you're saying: 'We've got two or three weeks or three months'—or whatever it is—'supply in storage.' If China embargoes our fuel, you've got two days. There'll be queues of two or three kilometres in every single place.

Before I shut up, I will say that it's a little-known fact that, arguably, the major underlying cause of World War I was that Winston Churchill bought all the shares in British Petroleum. That meant the Anglos owned every single drop of oil on earth. It was owned and controlled by the Anglos. I'm exaggerating slightly, but only slightly. So the Germans said: 'Churchill is the minister for the navy. He's going to put diesel boats in. Oil trade will be cut off. We'll be a third-rate power. Either we fight or we accept we'll be a third-rate power.' So they went to war. There were other factors involved, as we all know. What was World War II about? It was about America embargoing fuel into Japan. What was the European war about? It was about Hitler trying to get to the oilfields. The whole thing was about Stalingrad; of course, that was the gateway to the oilfields. That's what World War II was about. As a young lad of 19 years of age, I joined up because we were at war with Indonesia and everyone was going to go. I was pretty scared. We were on a 24-hour call-up to go overseas and fight. What was it about? Indonesia had invaded the oilfields of Borneo. We were, once again, fighting a war in the interests of Royal Dutch Shell. Let me not be cynical and say: you've got to fight wars to protect your oil pipeline. We have 27 per cent of our fuel needs available to us, and we send it overseas! We can't refine it in Australia. So, with 27 per cent self-sufficiency—no, we send it overseas. Waste disposal? We can easily do that. The Germans, for the last two years of the war, got their diesel from waste disposal. Something I will say, they can produce 30 per cent of Australia's diesel requirements if they get legislation giving them waste from the major population centres.

Just let me turn to wars for one more moment. Since Borneo, we've been involved in the Gulf War. What was that about? Oil. We were involved in Afghanistan. What was it about? Oil. The Arab nations have cut off the oil supply on numerous occasions. It is the No. 1 weapon of war, but we have done absolutely nothing about it. The government talks about missiles. I have read four million books on warfare and history. This nation can be defended. It can be defended if we have 100,000 or 200,000 missiles—a missile fortress wall around our nation. It can be defended if every single boy, and arguably every single girl, gets a rifle and is taught how to use it. And if you think this is unreasonable or ridiculous, that's exactly what happened to me when I was 12 years of age.

I'm just being reminded that I have an amendment here that I need to move. I move:

That the following words be added to the end of the amendment moved by the Member for Gorton:   .", and the House notes that:

(1)this bill seeks to enhance the regulatory framework for Australian critical infrastructure assets, particularly to improve protection against cyber-attacks; and

(2)to ensure that the bill meets its stated objects, modifications be made to allow:

(a)coverage for Commonwealth and state and territory government data;

(b)coverage for critical data of Australian critical infrastructure providers that is stored offshore; and

(c)the declaration of a particular business's critical data to be of national significance and require that such data must not be stored, transferred or accessed outside of Australia.

I want to conclude by saying that Global Switch arguably control the information systems inside our armed forces. They're owned by China. (Time expired)

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