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

Yes. I take great pleasure in seconding the motion on this bill, the Keeping Cash Transactions in Australia Bill 2024. Where I come from, we have firsthand knowledge of going two weeks without electricity after a cyclone. During most cyclones we lose electricity. We're at the end of the carrying line for the electricity, so we have no relay protection, and on numerous occasions, again and again, our little towns are caught out. Famous race meetings, like the races at Borroloola, often lose their ability to use cards.

But the real essence of this bill is: do you want your bank manager to decide whether or not you can buy a loaf of bread? There is no doubt that we're running pell-mell into some sort of dystopian society in which a handful of people control every aspect of our lives. I repeat: do you realise that, if you eliminate cash, you will have to get the permission of your bank manager to buy a loaf of bread? There would be few people in this country who haven't at some time or other got offside with their bank manager. And he might think it's good not to cash your cheques or allow you to use your card.

When I was appointed Aboriginal affairs minister in Queensland, the first question I got in every community was: 'Can we get the right to cash our socials?'—their social security payments. That's because the director of the department was using it as a control mechanism to terrify every single person, 70,000 or 80,000 people, living in the community areas in Queensland. I can tell you that, if they were terrified, the rest of you are going to have the wind put right up you if you move into this area.

In actual fact, the common law has recognised, as have the written laws of Australia, that a banknote is legal tender. You are obliged to take that banknote, as you yourself, Mr Speaker, and I advised the refectory in this place. To spell it out boldly and bluntly without any equivocation: it's absolutely necessary. I commend the member for Calare for bringing this bill forward. It is definitely something for which the time has arrived. It is an imperative assertion of freedom and an underlying principle of our freedom—that is, the right to purchase something. If that right is taken off us and given to the banks then the freedoms in this country have ceased to exist and Nineteen Eighty-Four has arrived upon us.

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