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

There's a wonderful story told about the greatest man in Australian history, Red Ted Theodore. I did not say that; Malcolm Fraser said that. I did not say that; Paul Keating said that. He is easily the most important person in Australian history, and I would most certainly agree with that statement. When he went down a mine for the third time in his life, where people were going to die and refused to go down—they were told they would be sacked if they didn't go down, so they went down, and another two people died. Theodore himself carried the scars and pain for the rest of his life as a result of what happened in the mine that day. So they formed a union.

The story is told that Ted Theodore and Bill McCormack, his partner in crime, were in the pub, and there was a bloke called Tommy who hadn't taken out a union ticket. Ted said, 'Tommy, you haven't taken out a ticket.' With that, he proceeded to write out the ticket, whether Tommy agreed to it or not. Tommy said, 'You can take your ticket and stick it'—I think you know the rest of that phrase. There are women present, so we won't use the rest of that phrase. Theodore completely ignored him and kept writing out the ticket. McCormack grabbed Tommy by the hair, pulled him back from the bar and smacked him in the mouth. This actually happened. He went straight down, and then Bill kicked him all around the bar-room floor. Then he picked him up by the belt, held him up and said, 'Now, you will take a ticket.' Theodore said, 'Tommy, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble if you had just taken that ticket in the first place.' Tommy said, 'Well you didn't go to the trouble of explaining it to me properly like Bill did.'

That story speaks for itself. If you think that you're going to get union membership in 1900 by asking people and pointing out to them that they're working for nothing and dying down in the mines—one in 30 that went down the mines never came up again; one in 30 that were in the cane fields never came out alive. What, do you think we just keep copping that? If you think you're going to get people enlightened enough and scared of their bosses—if the boss finds out they're taking out a union ticket, they'll get sacked—it's not going to happen. The only way to do this was through violence. If there was some other way of doing it, you can read your history books and come back and explain to me how else it could have been done. Whether it is the same today or not, we will have to argue and disagree.

Setka is under attack. Setka is one of those blokes that doesn't apologise for understanding that a woman has lifted 737 kilos, while a man has lifted 2,422 kilos. There is a difference between men and women. I most certainly would not be prepared to put a woman in to do some of the jobs that I've had to do when I was labouring in the mines. There is a difference. In this place we are not allowed to acknowledge the differences; we've all got to be the same. Go and tell that to the law courts, because in 90 per cent of the cases they will decide that the kids go to the mother. Go and tell the law courts. Go and tell the hospitals. If you can't see that there is a serious difference here, then we have a serious problem in society today.

The much maligned CFMEU—not the Tories, not the Liberal Party, not the National Party; the CFMEU—assailed Jackie Trad. To me, Jackie Trad was the architect of the abortion legislation in Queensland. For those who are happy for 7,000, 8,000 or 9,000 little children to be murdered before they're born, you would think she is a hero. To me she is not, and she will meet her maker with the deaths of tens of thousands of little babies murdered before they were born on her conscience. She sold the railways. The head of the railways was on $365,000 a year. She and he decided to sell the railways. So she sacked 14,000 railway workers; two out of three. Did the Labor Party make a Bo Peep about it? No. Did the unions make a Bo Peep about it? No. The only ones that did anything about her sacking 12,000 Queenslanders were the CFMEU. We had her sacked.

She also sacked about 2½ thousand people in corporatising the electricity industry. Did the ETU do anything about it? No. Speaking as a person that worked with his hands for a fair few years, we have been represented by a group of people that are spineless, cowardly and brainless, but I am proud to say that the CFMEU does not fit into that category. If you think we are going to stand idly by and watch 12 or 15 or 20 deaths a year on construction sites, you've got another think coming, my mate.

The last speaker referred to productivity in fruit and vegetable processing and said that we're competing against the rest of the world. Who are you having a piece of here, mate? Even in the United States, the last time I looked, they were on $5 a day. Obviously people come across the border from Mexico—wetback labour, as they call it. But, all the same, the price was $5 a day. We are on $28.50 an hour. How are we going to compete against the United States, let alone other countries? I'm sorry; it's $5 an hour in the United States. In the Philippines, it's $5 a day. We're on $28.50 an hour, so don't come in here and tell me that we can compete in fruit and vegetables.

When Keating—and he praised the Labor government for this—said that he was removing all protection, I was so angry I threw a boot at the wall. It was six o'clock in the morning. I said, 'Now I'm going to have to spend half my bloody time looking after the workers.' I'd been looking after farmers and small business at that stage. Now I'd have to look after the workers because the ALP wasn't going to do it. If you go to no tariffs and no protection, then you are up against people in China that work for $10 or $20 a day. When you are up against the Philippines or Vietnam or India, where it's $5 a day, how the hell do you think we're going to survive in that environment?

He said, 'Oh, we've got exports.' No, we don't! This country does not export anything now except gas and coal and iron ore. We are not a mining country. Mining is when you dig it out of the ground and sell the metal. We dig it out of the ground and sell the ground. We're a quarrying country. When I say that there are only three things we export, those three are over $100 billion. The next one down might be gold, beef or aluminium. They're about $15 thousand million—$15 thousand million versus the big three at about $110 thousand million or $120 thousand million. So we only have three exports.

Who's responsible for that? Mr Keating is responsible for that. He removed the protection. We have our workers that deserve $28.50 an hour. Believe me, if you are out in the sun picking up a bunch of bananas that weighs 40 kilos and putting it on your back and then carting it 20 or 30 metres to where you put it on the trolley, surely you deserve adequate remuneration for that work. We're very proud in this country to say that we do pay adequate compensation, but none of us are going to have a job unless we combine that with protection. When he made that statement that all protection would be removed, we could either close down industry in Australia or go to slave labour wage levels. There's no in-between. So what we've done is close down industry in Australia.

The previous speaker referred to the fruit and vegetable industry. I'm pleased he raised that, because 45 per cent of our fruit and vegetables now come from overseas. Three years ago, most were coming—obviously, a lot of that depends upon the season. Obviously, mangos can only be produced here in Australia for four or five months of the year. I don't object to stuff coming in to supply the other four or five months of the year, obviously. There will always be some importation, but there is no future for fruit and vegetables in this country unless we have protection. In the banana industry, the so-called farmers party, the National Party—what a joke! It's incredible that Labor destroyed all the jobs in Queensland and that at a federal level it was the National Party, who claim to be the farmers party, that destroyed all of the farming in Australia.

But I'll get back to the heart of what we're discussing today, which is that a large part of the CFMEU, the manufacturing part, is leaving. The manufacturing part is dominated by women. In fact, every executive member that I've met from that part has been a woman. Of course, on the construction side, every person I've met has been a man, and that's fairly predictable, looking at what is required in both of those industries. There is logic in these people leaving, but, at every demonstration or rally I've been in as a very active member of the CFMEU, we chant 'Workers united cannot be defeated.' Well, we're a bit disunited here! But I can see the logic that is behind this. These ladies really don't want to be running around with hard knuckleheaded construction workers who are overwhelming, almost exclusively, male. So there is a lot of logic in what is taking place here, but I do urge all elements of the trade union movement to realise that workers united cannot be defeated, and if we are disunited we are very easily defeated.

For me, I'm sick and tired of a certain union that represents the employers, not the employees. I'm not here to attack that union, but I will say this. I was a member of that union, and we once had an extremely dangerous work situation with something we called the 'shaker'. I had to jump up on one side of the shaker, with a sledgehammer, and hit the shaker to get it moving, because it was stuck. There was a bloke on the other side, and so when I'd hit it I'd jump off, and then he'd hit it and he'd jump off, and then I'd be back hitting it. We were hitting it to get it to start moving, but we had two minutes before our boots caught on fire—only two minutes. I remember that each time you hopped up your boots got hotter and hotter. You had to move at the speed of light, because when the shaker started moving it was coming at you at 60 miles per hour—extremely dangerous.

But it was a simple thing to fix up. I went to the union reps, and they were all on acting staff. How dreadful—every single union rep was on acting staff, and I thought: 'They're not going to look after me; that's for certain. They're going to be looking after their future and their promotion.' So I went and saw the organiser of this union. He came down to the lead smelter, and we had glass at the top—same as we have here—and I saw my boss looking out through the glass at me, because he was pointing me out. He was pointing me out as a troublemaker! I was lucky not to get sacked, but did anything happened about the shaker? Of course nothing happening about the shaker. He wasn't there to protect the employee in the dangerous situation; no, he was there to protect the membership payments from Mount Isa Mines to the union. That was what he was there to protect. It's called site coverage. He was there to protect site coverage; he wasn't there to protect the workers on the site.

So I switched to the CFMEU, and I've been very proud of our reputation for standing up where there are dangerous conditions. We've stood up, and, yes, we got a bad name for doing it, because everyone expects us to work in extremely dangerous situations and expects 10 or 12 of us to get killed every year so you can justify some political stand you want to make.

I've also got to add that the previous speaker said, 'It's damaging our construction industry and our international competitiveness,' but one of the biggest target sites in Australia for high-rise construction is the Gold Coast of Queensland— (Time expired)

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