Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak on the value systems of people of the persuasion mentioned in the speech of the member before me. It is true that almost every religion through human history has reflected value systems, and they are survival value systems. We can see what happened to those religions that have indulged in human sacrifice, like Montezuma in a clash with Cortes. The survival of a race is embedded in these belief systems. If you have a belief such as that of the honourable senator that the previous member has referred to then history will pass judgment upon you. You and your race of people will simply vanish from the gene pool. It is a very sad fact of life that people with beliefs such as those of the senator referred to by the previous speaker will lead Australia down that pathway. When 20 people die in Australia, they are replaced by 17 people. We are a dying race; we are a vanishing race.

Patrick Buchanan, speechwriter—or press secretary, as we might call them in Australia—for four American presidents, wrote a famous book called The Death of the West. He said that by the year 2015 or 2025—I cannot remember which it was; he wrote the book in the 1980s, I think—the countries of Europe would require 25 million workers just to keep their essential services going. Since there is no European country that has a positive birthrate, the only place that those workers can be drawn from are, of course, the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East. Basically, the book says, ‘I will leave to your imagination what 25 million not just people but Muslim families moving into Europe will do to Europe.’ Paris is on fire. Quite rightly, the people of the Middle East can say, ‘The future belongs to us.’ And it does, because of the primitive, incredible attitudes towards life of people like the senator referred to by the previous speaker. Please God, that attitude will vanish somewhere in the future. But at the present we are a vanishing race, and that is the most definitive judgment that history can place upon a race of people—that they simply eliminate themselves from the gene pool.

In the time left to me, I would address again the issue of health in the state of Queensland. As I have said before, in the northern half of Queensland, we have only one doctor per 1,100 people—0.967 million people live north of Rockhampton in Queensland. On the basis that there are nearly one million people in that area and with the figure for Australia being one doctor per 358 people, we would require nearly 3,000 doctors in that area. I am including specialists—and I cannot get the figures for specialists, even though I have been trying to for two days. However, by extrapolating from other figures, we can assume that we would have about 200 specialists. Adding 200 specialists to the 830 doctors we have in this area now would give us 1,030 doctors. That leaves us nearly 2,000 doctors short in the northern half of the state.

The federal government has a part to play here. We are producing only 60 doctors from JCU, the university that is in the epicentre of the problem. On these figures, it would appear that that university should increase its production of doctors to 200, but they are most certainly pushing aggressively to move up to 150. As I said yesterday in question time, Mr Beattie’s efforts have amounted to a huge talkfest and a massive multimillion-dollar campaign to blame the federal government. Would to heaven he would use some of that money to induce doctors in England, South Africa and some of these other countries to come to Australia. But he has chosen to use the money for political purposes to protect himself—not to protect the people of Queensland.

The federal government also has something to answer for here: it has allocated only 60 places. I was deeply disappointed in the minister’s response yesterday to my question. I sent the question to him beforehand so that he would have plenty of time to reply to it. He has an onus too. That onus is to lift the number of places at JCU from 60 to 150 at the very least. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.