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Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Page: 13663

Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (18:08): I have very great respect for the minister who brought forward the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Family Participation Measures) Bill 2011, but I do not have respect for the people who proposed it to him and I do not have respect for the government for carrying it forward. I am very surprised at my own strength of feeling against this bill.

I have some pet hates. One of them is people who tell other people what to do and who love to have power and control over them. My experience of one of the most dreadful shames of our nation is what I call 'child thieving'. We stood up and had the hypocrisy in this place to apologise for the stolen children. According to the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald they are being stolen in New South Wales at three times the rate that they were stolen in the period of the stolen children. That is rate, not absolute numbers. The absolute numbers are appalling. Similarly, in Queensland, which is reputed to be worse, they have hidden the figures. We cannot find the figures in Queensland of how many children are being stolen.

When I was a state member, I saw numerous cases of people whom I would describe as being sick and drunk with power. If ever I have seen a bill that will deliver power to the middle-class self-opinionated know-all university class this is it! And I do not speak owing anything to anyone. I was president of my faculty at the university, I was president of my college, I was president of the combined colleges council and I served on the students union for three years, so I would hardly suffer an inferiority complex in that area. But having had that confidence and having had the great privilege, I suppose, of an education of that quality, let me relate to you a case that I had.

This mother classically fits this mould. She had a child in her teens, at 16 or 17. She was not a perfect mother—she was far from being a perfect mother—but she was a mother. She loved her child and her child loved her. When she fell into the hands of a social worker in Charters Towers, the social worker decided that she had mental problems and committed her to a mental institution. The terror that is out there for ordinary people. It always amazes me, this place, that I do not hear members of parliament tell these stories—don't you have any human stories that happen to you?

Let me return to the story of this poor woman. She was committed to a mental institution—they have leery names for them these days—and her little child was taken off her. Unfortunately for the social workers, the report was left—and I got hold of it. It said that the child was unhappy in the presence of the officers of the department. She was dragged away from her mother, crying her eyes out and screaming. And her mother was crying her eyes out and screaming whilst the child was dragged out by two police, who absolutely hated doing the job. They were really nice fellows. The social workers said they were doing the right thing. 'It's tough but we have to do this job.' If ever I have seen the thought police in operation it is those people, those social workers; they just love their power—sick and drunk with power.

God is good, because even though this woman had a nut case for a psychiatrist, he went on holidays and a lady psychiatrist was put in charge. She wrote: 'This woman is not now nor ever will be mentally unstable or in need of incarceration in an institution, now or in the future.' It was a scathing indictment of the psychologist, the social workers and the psychiatrist. That being the case, I immediately proceeded to go after the social workers involved in this shocking case.

The child's report said that in the presence of the social workers, the officers of the department, the child spontaneously burst out crying and hid under the bed. She got into the foster parents' bed and clung to the woman who was her foster mother for the time being. They said this was aberrant behaviour. Someone takes you—drags you—kicking and screaming away from your mother, who is bawling her eyes out and being held back by the police, and then you are sensitive towards the social worker. You are telling us in this place that these poor little mothers are going to be placed under the control of these people!

I will go on. The chief psychologist of North Queensland is a very wealthy fellow and a fellow I had very great respect for when he worked in children's services. He is one of the most excellent officers I ever worked with as a member of parliament. I rang him up concerning the woman in charge. I had said to her, 'I want the child returned to the mother,' and she said, 'No, we have to do assessments.' I said: 'There are no assessments. The child was taken because the mother was mentally unstable. It has now been determined, absolutely, that she is not mentally unstable and the social worker who deemed her to be mentally unstable has been sacked. You bundled her off as fast as you could get her out of the place. I know who was sick. It was the social worker who was sick. That is who was sick.' So I rang this psychologist, the most eminent psychologist in North Queensland at that time. I told him that the head of the department, when I started speaking to her on the telephone and said the daughter had to be returned, hyperventilated—she could not tolerate anyone standing up to her—and had to leave the telephone. I told the young bloke who came on the phone that I wanted her back on the telephone. He said, 'I think she's a bit sick.' I will tell you how sick she was. What she did next week was return the child to the father, which was an option that was available to her, just to prove that she had the power: 'The mother does not have the power, I have the power. No member of parliament will tell me what to do. I will return the child to the father!'

What has happened to that mother, we do not know. What has happened to that child, we do not know. But we know very much what the psychologist told me. He said that head of the children's services area, which was operating in this case, 'is clinically sick'. I do not know the term he used, but he used technical terms. He said, 'I'll tell you her symptoms.' He told me her symptoms, and I said, 'You're dead right, she is definitely sick.'

From my experience, particularly in the field of Indigenous affairs, where I was minister for the best part of a decade, I found that when people have absolute power it corrupts them absolutely. We had a case which is very much a matter of public record in Queensland. Pattie O'Shane said there were only two ministers in Queensland history. That was effectively correct. There were two heads of the department and both were there for 44 years. I will not go into the running of the department. Suffice it to say that the struggles between me and the forces in that department are the subject of two books that are on the reading list at the university.

When I was a young man, most people of reasonable intelligence read the book 1984 and learnt about Big Brother. This book is about a society in which we are all controlled. There are very few people's names that have become part of the language. 'Darwinian' is a word that has become part of our language and, along with the spectre of Big Brother in George Orwell's book, 'Orwellian' has also become part of the lexicon of our language. Big Brother said: 'We will look after you. We will see that you are fed and clothed. We will do these things for you.'

I must relate the story of a meeting I had the very great honour of attending. At this meeting Percy Neal, the chair at Yarrabah Shire Council, said to the minister—and I am not here to denigrate people so I will not mention the minister's name—'Minister, you're familiar with the term "addiction"?' She said yes. He said, 'You would know then that the way you cure an addiction is to first admit it to it.' She said, 'Yes, of course, Percy.' She is a very well spoken woman and a very impressive woman. He said: 'Well, you see, you have an addiction. That addiction is that we blackfellas cannot look after ourselves, that we need you whitefellas to look after us. That is your addiction. You just cannot get it out of your heads that we can look after our own affairs.' And there are a lot of people in this parliament today who cannot get it out of their heads that we had to rescue that little woman, that child—that waif, trash or whatever term you might like to apply to her; you might say she is an unfortunate. Those are the sorts of terms you will use when you talk about this. But really, at the end of the day, you are now controlling that young woman's life. And it might surprise you or jade your middle- or upper-class values—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr S Sidebottom ) (18:19): No, no, no, no, no. I do not have those prejudices so please do not direct those comments at me.

Mr KATTER: Mr Deputy Speaker, I would never in a million years consider you to be part of it.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know, but just generalise it please.

Mr KATTER: Those people who have those attitudes shall now control the power to take away a child from a young mother. To you, they may be terrible mothers. To you, you may have to rescue the children. That was what was said in the old days of the stolen children. They said constantly that we had to rescue the children from people and the very unacceptable way in which they were living. But I know one of these young mothers—I went out with the daughter for a tiny little while. She pulled herself up and became a fully qualified and fully trained nurse and the director of nursing in a hospital. She became a leading member in the community and married the local dentist. She was tremendously successful. But you would have placed that mother under some sort of tutelage—and I use that word with aforethought.

One of my good friends was brought up by a teenage mother, and I am sure she would have been under this tutelage. He is one of the finest men I know. His son is a doctor. He has been a great leader. He has been a foreman with the main roads department. He is a great success story. There was another case from my home town. There was a little girl who could not have possibly have had a worse upbringing. But she is a very successful mother and has a very successful family. She loved her mother, even though her mother was not a good mother. Her son played football with my son. I think in six years they did not lose a game by less than 40 points. A brilliant footballer! He is a trained electrician now with a number of kids and a very happy family. So what you might see as a woman who needs to be controlled by a social worker, some of us would see as a little hero.

Sadly, the statistics in this country show that in 10 years, when I, the first of the baby boomers, die, there will be more deaths than births in this country. Why are women not having children in this country? It is because, as my daughters have said to me, if you are a mother and you want to stay at home and look after your kids, you are regarded as a second-class citizen. You really are socially ostracised and isolated. I am proud to say that most of my daughters have become stay-at-home mothers in spite of that and in spite of the fact that they were all on very big incomes. They were very successful people and they had to sacrifice a lot of income to take that decision. In the short time left to me, I cannot help but say that there are very strong racial overtones in this bill. Putting on my blackfella hat rather than my whitefella hat, I say that I resent very, very strongly the implications of this legislation. There will be very great sorrow and pain for the little mothers, who have been great heroes as far as I am concerned but who have committed the simple sin of wanting to have a child and be a mother. For that they will be punished by being put under the control of the social workers, whose tender mercies I have outlined here tonight. They are just some of the many things that are in the files in my office. (Time expired)