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

Well, he's had the floor up to date, and he doesn't like me saying that they spat upon Christianity. My friend, you enjoy democracy because the Magna Carta was written by Archbishop Langton. That's who wrote it. Pax Romana was brought to the world by Constantine because he became a Christian. The most brutal regime on earth, Rome, was Christianised and civilised, and I think that's an accurate description.

No. They spat upon Christianity. The six greatest scientists in human history are Pasteur, Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Faraday and Mendel, and all of them were profound Christian believers. Mendel was a monk and Faraday was a preacher of religion. They're the six greatest scientists in human history. Who destroyed communism? It murdered 78 million people, and who destroyed it? Gorbachev. And his first comment to the world was: 'When we go down upon our knees at night we all pray to the same God.' The world that I lived in was different than the world that I was brought up in, with the terror of the atomic bomb threatening us every day of our lives, and it was cured by that great man, Gorbachev, and the Pope of Rome and Charlie Wilson, who were all profound Christians, motivated by Christianity. Who got rid of slavery? We Christians did. Who led the civil rights movement in the United States? We Christians did. I now see it spat upon by this organisation and this organisation being lauded by people in this parliament.

There's the little matter of cost. It's a big party for Brisbane. I don't think there are too many people in Brisbane who are anxious about it. No-one else applied for it. No-one else in the world wanted it. Don't skite about getting it, because no-one else in the world wanted it. Unlike most people in this place, I was an Olympic qualifier in long jump. I didn't go; I won't go into that.

I want to come back to the issue of the cost of $30 billion. That's the average cost of the last four Olympic Games, with a little bit of inflation. That's from a budget of $50 billion. What could I do with that $30 billion? In Far North Queensland we had five deaths on the roads in two weeks and 74 deaths in 14 years. We need a tunnel. Brisbane's got 36 kilometres of tunnels. North Queensland hasn't got one kilometre of tunnel. Brisbane's got 1.2 million people, and we've got a million people.

What you're seeing is the tyranny of the majority, and there was a good example of it here this evening when I tried to defend Christianity. The member kept interrupting, all the time. Obviously, he hates Christianity and that's probably why he is backing the Olympics.

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