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

Townsville, Cairns, Mount Isa and Mareeba have the highest crime rates ever recorded probably in Australian history. Over three cars are stolen every day in Cairns. Every family in Townsville will, statistically, have their car stolen over the next 13 years. When these juvenile offenders are incarcerated in what is euphemistically called a detention centre, this detention costs the taxpayers over $850,000 a year. And what do the magistrates achieve? They keep sending an amateur criminal to incarceration and getting back a professional criminal—a person who is now totally alienated and who sees himself as an enemy of society

In the old days, before the whitefellas came, we blackfellas had bujeka, and it was a common word. Percy Neal told me it was used by the tribes, a common word in Eastern Australia, a common word in Central Australia and a common word in Western Australia. It means banishment. My generation remembers, at the top of the hit parade, the song 'My Boomerang Won't Come Back'. To quote from that song:

They banished him

From the tribes then

And sent him on his way

He had a backless boomerang

So here he could not stay

In other words: banishment, which was the law in the old days in Australia. If you played up in the old days, they didn't need prisons. You'd be sent out into the bush to live by yourself until you were prepared to behave like a civilised human being, and then—and only then—you'd be allowed back into the camp. So, what we are saying is to bring back bujeka: 'Goodbye; ta-ta; I'll see you in a year's time.' You will now be 1,000 kilometres away from Cairns or 1,000 kilometres away Mount Eliza. What we're saying is to bring back bujeka.

It must be said that in many situations the punishment does not fit the crime. Many young kids are just guilty by association. They're little kids who've been thrown in a steel cage like an animal when they really haven't done anything wrong; their older brother tells them that they are to hop in the car he's just stolen or he'll get a bashing. In the past, these kids would have been given a good kick up the backside and a clip under the ears by a local copper, and that would have been the end of it. But now they are costing us close to $1 million a year and of course are permanently alienated from society. Relocation sentencing, as it's come to be called—being sent to some remote location, literally 1,000 kilometres away—offers the people of Cairns, Mount Isa, Ingham, Mareeba and Townsville assurance that these offenders will not be in their towns any longer; they will be 1,000 kilometres away, and they won't be costing you $850,000 a year. By the way, I was corrected the other night on television: it was $1 million. (Time expired)