The Politics of trouble got me into politics in Queensland, but I never really expected to be here so soon. It would be remiss of me not to thank the politicians of the last Parliament for making such a mess of things that the people of my electorate gave them a big kick in the pants and put me in Parliament instead. I thank my electors for their endorsement. I also thank them for their perception and wisdom in giving me the opportunity to represent them in this House. I pledge to put them first in all things: to listen to their wants and to represent them faithfully in this Parliament. If John Howard threatens me - threatens me with hardship and penalties to get his own way, threatens to put my electors last, I will tell him that I put my electors first, that I put Queensland first.
Queensland is under siege. It is beset with conflict and disharmony. It was this rising tide of trouble that attracted me into politics in the Burdekin. As a teen, I was like most teenagers. I could not care less about politics, largely because the politicians I knew were politicians who I could trust to do the right thing by me. But by the time I turned 20, things had changed dramatically. The country was in turmoil, as was the State and, most importantly, our communities were being savaged by insurmountable problems. Things were changing for the worse. Morally, conditions were in a dive. There were fractious laws - petty laws. Laws to control people and limit freedom were emerging everywhere - restricting fishing, frustrating shooting, making life miserable for everyone except for the mushrooming bureaucrats.
I do not recall being asked at any time if I wanted all of these restrictions. Nobody else was asked either. Politicians just imposed restrictions on freedom. They knew what was best. Increasingly, people have found that if they did anything, they were breaking the law. For me, the firearm laws were the last straw.
I took a keen interest in Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Joh listened to the people while others, especially those who followed him, only regulated the people. Some people begrudged Sir Joh’s success. They were lesser men, greedy men and ambitious men who were frustrated that Sir Joh really represented truth. When the Queensland Nationals sacked Sir Joh, they destroyed an entire generation’s trust in that party. Let us be blunt about Sir Joh: Labor never defeated Sir Joh; it could not and never did. It was the Nationals themselves who defeated Sir Joh. They plunged the knife into Caesar and as a direct consequence they began the long slide into the hole that they now find themselves in. They have a long way to go before they hit the dark, deep bottom of the pit they dug for themselves.
My constituents were really upset about the firearms hysteria and the ridiculous laws that followed. Arguments for such laws verged on the crazy, ridiculous and absurd. Many voters began to question the motives of the parties in power. The parties seemed more interested in the opinions of foreigners or members of other parties than they were in the wants of their own members - of Australians. They fawned on foreign policy, globalisation, multinationals, Asia and the United Nations. They were more concerned with the world outside Australian than the Australia that we knew.
They gave open slather to the multinationals and provided extended trading opportunities to the international big boys such as Kmart, Woolworths and Target. They did not want to know small business, especially Australian-owned small business. Queensland’s economic demise is a direct result of the collapse of small business. Small business has stayed loyal to Australia and pays its share of tax. Most of the foreign-owned multinationals, which the big parties have crawled into bed with, take their money out of Australia and pay little or not tax at all. Now, to make up for their failures the parties want Australians to pay a GST. They must think that Australians are asleep at the wheel! Really, how can the modern political parties look Australians in the eye and claim to represent them when their every action underlines the truth that they do not want to represent their own voters.
Another real source of trouble is the Federal Government’s extension of its powers into the realm of State power. Each year the Federal Government, assisted by its mates in the States, worms away to weaken the States and our Constitution. The Borbidge Government became a doormat for Canberra. It is time that this Parliament stood up to Canberra and said, "This far and no further."
Everybody knows that this country is in trouble. Rents are up; taxes, too. Registrations are up. Even rates are rising. And politicians in Canberra claim that we have no inflation. What they have done is fiddle the books fool themselves into believing we have not inflation. Nobody else is fooled, but how would they know? they never ask us. The Premier is more interested in communist Vietnam. The Prime Minister is more interested in building palaces in Africa.
The great doublecross of them all was Prime Minister Howard’s knee-jerk reaction on the firearm laws, allegedly because of Port Arthur. We now know that Port Arthur had nothing to do with it. That was only the excuse to slug Australians with extremist laws long hidden away in the files, laws hidden away in the dark bog holes of Canberra, awaiting the day when Australian law makers could be scared into passing laws hatched in a far away foreign capital to better fit Australians into their glorified international mould. Howard and his mates condemned hundreds of thousands of Australians as potential murderers. That would be laughable in itself if it were not so serious. It was an Australian version of Stalin’s condemnation of land-owning farmers as enemies of the state and, as such, potential murderers who had to be rooted up and destroyed.
Taken in perspective, alcohol and cigarettes kill more Australians every year and cause more social problems than firearms cause in half a century, yet Howard squandered millions of dollars on his petty little whim. Domestic violence and drugs cause more harm than firearms ever did, but Howard is spending peanuts on the essentials and big bucks on peanut issues. Millions of Australians have been victimised to swell Howard’s ego and to make jobs for police bureaucrats. The question to be answered is: why? Could there be a more sinister reason?
I seem to remember that Winston Churchill was called everything from a vicious warmonger to a dangerous extremist because he wanted Great Britain to rearm to defend the homeland. They used the same vicious techniques, swear words, against Churchill as are now being used to intimidate and smear One Nation. After much blood, toil, tears and sweat, the time came to put national interest first and Churchill equipped Great Britain for the Nazi onslaught, which killed millions. Many of our boys died because the firearm grabbers held sway for so many years before the war. Our own boys had to train with broomsticks.
How many more Australians will die some time in the future because of the stupidity of John Howard in destroying a major defence capacity for Australia? Could it be that those who want Australia disarmed are just repeating the events of those dangerous pre-war years? They really do not want Australia sufficiently armed to defend itself because their loyalties lie elsewhere, outside Australia. Right now those questions are being answered in countless homes across Australia, and the answers being given will spell doom for the firearm grabbers and disarmament freaks. A famous man once said, "If you want peace, you must prepare for war."
The ALP’s Kaiser says that he has declared war on One Nation. He should take note that the expert on war, Clauswitz, defined war as politics conducted by other means. What means do Kaiser and his mates intend to use? The answer is obvious. We already know. they will use vilification, smear, guilt by association, perversion by their mates in some media, false witness, cursing and swearing, character assassination, innuendo and a call to violence. We know this and the world knows this because we read all about it in the Sydney Morning Herald. Labor’s dirty little genie is out of the bottle.
A few weeks ago News Weekly carried a detailed exposure of the tactics mounted by Labor to protect its policies to attack and hurt Australia and Australians. Why, even the Courier-Mail has carried a few rather tame articles about Labor’s scam to fool Australians into not talking about issues that Labor wants to promote but cannot defend because such policies are anti-Australian.
The Labor Party, or sections of it, have mounted a major smear campaign against Australia and everything Australian while pretending to be Australian. One Nation h as taken a stand for Australian. Labor has mounted a smear campaign against One Nation because we dare to put Australia first, but as every day passes more Australians are awakening to the Labor scam, awakening to the unusual situation that often times when you scratch a Laborite a Liberal bleeds.
My electorate, like so many other electorates, is facing crippling unemployment. While Howard and Beattie suck up to their mates in the corporate cartels, go on junkets around Asia and shadow box amongst themselves, for the first time in my 26 years in the Burdekin I am seeing business premises closed, shops vacant, independent businessmen frustrated and feeling betrayed, careers destroyed and young people without hope for the future. This augurs big trouble for those who have caused this economic devastation. There is big trouble in the Burdekin, and it is no different from anywhere else in Australia. The situation is the direct result of economic rationalism, globalisation, the non-existent level playing field, the politics of "get bit or get out" and the Federal and State Governments’ sell-out of Australian and Queensland interests in the cartels, robber barons, monopolies and absentee landlords. These cartels now hope to force upon Australian the notorious and sovereignty destroying Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which our Federal Government supports sight unseen. Shame, Howard, shame! They have been selling out Australia ever since the Liberal axis agreed to the Lima accord - just another insider’s dream to export Australian jobs and internationalise our financial institutions.
Today gives me the opportunity to ask present and past Governments to come clean on their new-age fantasies. If their new-age policies are supposed to work, then why do we have so many unemployed, why is our collective living standard falling and why, too, do they have to fiddle the figures to disguise the real level of unemployment? Why are businesses going broke? Why can employers no longer put on apprentices? Why is this happening in a country that we are continuously told is the land of opportunity?
A private business would quickly go broke if it were run the way the politicians have run both Australia and Queensland during the past two decades. Unlike productive business, the Government has been ripping money off private people to cover up its own incompetence. When will it stop? The answer is an easy one: when the guilty men, the failed men, the men and women who no longer care for Australia and Queensland, are kicked for a six at the next election. That is when. One Nation has started this process rolling. Only then can we stop the bungles and blunders. Only then will we have the courage to bring this State and nation back to the levels of prosperity we experienced under that great statesman Sir Robert Menzies and that equally great Queenslander Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Only then can we put behind us the man-made troubles of today.
We can only put our troubles behind us by putting behind us the failed politics of the failed men of the failed political parties opposite. Only then will we end our troubles and march ahead as one Australia, a united Australia - as one nation united for the good of all. The hope of Queensland is bound up in jus two momentous words - fresh words, clean words, words that spell salvation for all. Those words are "One Nation". I support the amendment moved by the member for Caboolture.
End of Speech.