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

I really do think that this is a very important debate. One of the most highly respected and most long-serving Labor ministers wanted me to come down and see him. Before I could even sit down, he said: 'Politicians today—it doesn't matter what their party or where they come from—do not govern. They do not govern.' As a long-serving minister myself, albeit in a state government, I said, 'When did you come to that conclusion?' He said, 'Three years ago.' I said, 'Well, you're beating me, mate, because I came to that conclusion three months ago.' It is not that you're evil or that you're wrong in what you decide, Mr LNP or Mr ALP; it's that you just don't govern. I can go to you with an issue and you'll listen to me—you'll agree with me—but I absolutely know: nothing will happen. If two very long-serving ministers say that, then I think there has to be a little tiny bit of substance in that observation.

In my opinion, the Prime Minister was desperate to try and get something to happen. In discussions with senior leaders—I won't mention names over here—I said, 'Please don't be like this government: 4½ years, and not one single thing done.' I think, if you asked the average Australian what happened in those 4½ years, they would say the same thing. But he was in a desperate effort.

I make this point and I say it in defence of Scott Morrison: he is very proud of his forebears. One of them, his great-aunt, is on the $10 note. That's Dame Mary Gilmore, who came from my hometown of Cloncurry, where she is buried. She was the great La Pasionaria of the labour movement. There would have been no labour movement without Dame Mary Gilmore, that wonderful poet—and I'm not going to recite her poetry, although I know many of her poems!

Now, this man, carrying on that tradition, desperately wanted to do something for his people. But he was hit with a situation which the government now is hit with: they just can't govern. There's the enormous power of the media and the social interactions happening on social media. I don't know what people's reasons are and I don't intend to canvass those reasons here today. But you have to govern. In a desperate effort to govern, he went to very excessive—and I agree with the government—unusual and unconventional actions. Of course, he brought opprobrium upon himself. But he did that in a desperate effort.

If you, the ALP government of Australia, think you're going to get out from under, then let's take just one issue. It's a very simple, tiny issue.

We were all saying we're going to vote for the first changes to the Australian Constitution and aren't we wonderful people because we really love my blackfella cousin brothers. Do you? They've got a life expectancy of 56. Not one single market garden has been put there by the ALP government of Queensland or the LNP government of Australia—not one. After 4½ years of screaming and yelling and pleading—nothing, nothing. And it's not because the ministers were bad people or that the present minister is a bad person; it's just that they can't govern. As a person that did govern, I know you need—and I will not hesitate to use the word—'brutality'. If I want you to go in that direction and you don't go in it then, if it's the Queensland government, God help you.

Why I'm so concerned and why I'm so interested in this censure motion today is that, in Queensland, we had exactly that situation. We had a premier, Bjelke-Petersen, who for some reason or other had a very funny attitude towards First Australians and a very unpleasant and unfortunate attitude towards First Australians. I was put in as minister, and I was absolutely determined that I would give the people what they wanted, which was a freehold private title to land, the same as was enjoyed by everyone else on earth. I did give them self-management powers, which arguably exceeded state government and federal government powers—to some degree they were a government within a government, and people can criticise me for that.

For the committee of the National Party, I selected every single one of the members because they'd either played rugby league or mustered cattle. I knew if they'd either mustered cattle or played rugby league they would have great respect for First Australians as people. They would not see them as blackfellas or whitefellas; they'd just see them as people. That committee stood 100 per cent behind me, and Doug Jennings, a famous man for moral integrity who brought down the Victorian government with the land scams—God bless him—said to Bjelke-Petersen, 'You touch Katter then I'll touch you!" Bjelke-Petersen knew that that committee was standing four square behind me, so we had a clash here. The bloke who was elected to be the boss of Queensland said, 'You're not going to do that!' But I'd been given by the Governor a piece of paper saying I had the power to do that.

Here we arguably have the same sort of situation that may have occurred with the last Prime Minister. In that situation you fight the battle. He could sack me. The boss rang up six and said, 'I'm going to sack this bloke.' That's when people have to make an intelligent and a moral decision. Are you going to back Bjelke-Petersen or are you going to back what needs to be done here? I'm very proud to say that the overwhelming majority of my party said, 'No, we're backing the bloke that's doing the things that need to be done.' In fairness to the memory of Bjelke-Petersen, I've got to say that he swung back the other way and started championing all of those changes. His critics would say he did that because he always saw which way the political wind was blowing. Other people say that he just went back to the old missionary that founded Hope Vale, the home of Noely Pearson and most of the great leadership of Australia. Some of the great rugby league players in Australia also come from Hope Vale. He founded that with Leo Rosendale, one of my blackfellas brother cousins.

Overlaid on this issue is the volatility of the leadership in the LNP. We have volatility in the ALP as well, but these were not things that existed in the days of Howard or in the days of Menzies or in the days of Curtin or Chifley, going way back. But now there is volatility of leadership, and if you try to overrule a minister, he'll get his nose out of joint and he'll come gunning for you—not overtly, of course, just with quiet talks with the media or quiet talks with key people on the backbench you want to get on the frontbench. We have this volatility element overlaid on it, but this is the most important point I want to make, and Ms Bell did not understand this. It amazes me how lawyers simply don't understand the law. When I want to law school I was taught that there are conventions, constitutional conventions. We come into this place—not me, but the rest of you—and swear allegiance to a lady in England, so if you want to read the letter of the law, will you do what the lady in England tells you to do? You swore allegiance to her. I didn't, but you did. The constitutional convention says, 'That's rubbish; no-one's going to take any notice of a lady in England.' Well, that's the law. The constitutional convention is the law, and the constitutional convention is that Menzies and McEwen ran this place. Ministers may have had powers, but they didn't have ultimate powers.

This cuts to the very heart of the modern quandary of why governments can't govern, and the desperation of a Prime Minister resorting to what is not only unconventional but also very unusual behaviour was forced upon him because he was trying to govern. If you think on the government side of this parliament that you're going to be able to govern—well, you've been there for six months, and I don't know anything that has changed in the six months. You can run around talking about your IR legislation that I voted for and supported you on, but is it going to change anything? No. We'll just see next year whether there's anything that you do that actually indicates that you govern. I highly respect and like many of the mob on this side and their leadership, but did they govern? Point out something out to me you did? Did you build a factory? Did you build a dam? Did you change some law that enabled the First Australians to have a private freehold title like everyone else on earth? Did you do any of those things? No, you did none of those things.

In conclusion I say this cuts to the very heart of modern government. Prime Minister Albanese was voted for by the people of Australia. They expect him to govern. Now, whether you say that he is in the position of a monarch or whether you don't, the Australian people decided that he is the boss. He has the ultimate say and the ultimate responsibility, and he should not have to go to the lengths to which the last Prime Minister went to take action, whether you agree with him or whether you don't. You can have the situation where you have your beliefs, as I did in state parliament, and alright, he can sack me, because he has the last say. But in the end if you stand your ground and you try to do something, you'll be surprised how many people back you up, and that's the message that I'd like to leave with this place. If you make a stand on what you believe is the right thing and the intelligent thing to do, then people will back you. Even though no-one bet that I would win, in the end I did very comprehensively—no, I didn't; the people did. The people who knew it was the right thing to do won in the end.

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