Mr KATTER (11:26 AM) —I think that the measure of any country is probably how it treats some of its poorest people. I listened to a speech recently by a professor from the University of Queensland who said that this country had three great shames: the way we treated the men who came home from Vietnam, the way we treated our dairy farmers and the way we treated the first Australians. To that list, I would add the Boer War and the concentration camps there; and our refusal to allow the Jewish people into Australia during the Second World War. Most certainly, I think, they are five things this country should not be very proud of at all.

People might say, `All right, some mistakes were made'—and some would argue that some very terrible mistakes were made —`and there have been endeavours to try and overcome that situation.' But really, whether or not those mistakes were made, where you have an identifiable group of people who start from a base of no education and have, in the case of those who live in a totally first Australian community—or, some people would say, in an Aboriginal community—no inherited understanding of democratic processes, of the rule of law and of all of those sorts of concepts, you are asking a lot. If you say that they are not doing it well under self-management—and I am referring specifically to Queensland, which is the only state really that had self-management, although I have to use the past tense there—you have to remember that you are asking a group of people to leap from virtually no background at all in democracy or rule of law to modern day, sophisticated, democratic processes and systems. If it is taking them a while to get there, it is worth remembering that the British set up the King's Council at Runnymede in 1215 and I do not really think there was democracy in England until the 1800s. It took them 600 years. If you want to use Cromwell as your baseline you are still talking about 400 years, and yet you are expecting this group of people to leap more quickly than that. There has been a lot of criticism in Queensland over the qualified reports from the Auditor-General for the self-managed—self-governing, if you like—com-munities of Queensland, but if we understand history and recognise how long it took the English to achieve a proper functioning democratic system then I think we can allow the people in this country some benefit of doubt.

Today the ALP have moved a second reading amendment to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Amendment Bill 2004, which we are currently debating. I think their amendment is very good, except for the first part of it. I wish they would split it up so that I could vote for it, but I have enormous difficulties with the use of the word `reconciliation'. If you keep talking about reconciliation, it means that you see there is a necessity for reconciliation. I would hope that in the hearts and minds of all Australians there is no necessity for reconciliation. Reconciliation assumes that there is a conflict. People are at a great distance from this problem. The honourable member for Lingiari, who is from the Northern Territory, is in the House, and I think he may have some inkling of what I am saying here—and its correctness or incorrectness.

We have special academic prizes in Queensland for people who are of Aboriginal descent. Why do they need special prizes? To me, that sends out the most terrible psychological message—the same message that the reconciliation debate sends out. I simply do not see this as other people see it. People constatly refer to Aborigines, and I constantly try to use the term `first Australians', because again I do not want to differentiate. I had the very great honour and privilege of being brought up in one of the most integrated communities in Australia—in fact a lot of people describe my hometown of Cloncurry, of which I am very proud, as easily the most integrated community in Australia. There just was no consciousness there of these people being different. In everything you did in your life there was a black face among the people you were doing it with—whether we were playing up behind the hotel or getting up to all the pranks we got up to at the Two Mile Waterhole, on the rugby league oval, at mustering camps or wherever.

Mr Snowdon —What did you do at the Two Mile Waterhole?

Mr KATTER —I had better ignore that one and move on! I have watched this very closely over the years, having been one of the longest serving Aboriginal affairs ministers in Australian history—serving in state government—and having had the great privilege of receiving the accolades of almost every leader. I do not say that to praise myself, but because it relates to the ALP's amendment, which says that there was no interface with people of Aboriginal descent before this decision was made and asks what is going to happen afterwards. You have to understand that, after I left Queensland politics, subsequent governments have run into horrific problems in Aboriginal affairs. Every minister they have had has been tenaciously condemned by the black community. They all had the unfortunate burden of following me as minister—and I make the point that my background in Cloncurry gave me a great advantage so I do not want anyone to think I am praising myself here; that is not the point I am making.

The point I am making to the House is that I remember a three-month period in which I spent only three nights in my home, even though I had five little kids I love very much—as we all love our kids. Every one of those nights and days was spent sitting down and staring at the faces—the black faces—of Australians and, please God I hope, at all times keeping my mouth shut and desperately trying to listen. That has not taken place since. Not since Billy Wentworth was in this place have we had a single Aboriginal affairs minister who has gone out there and put real time into this portfolio. It does require an awful lot of time, because these people are not very friendly towards outsiders—and who can blame them. You have to spend an enormous amount of time to win their confidence. I had a lot of experience of living in communities that were predominantly of Aboriginal descent—the Cloncurry community is arguably predominantly of Aboriginal descent. It is a big town too, in the sense that it has 4,000 people, which is big by our standards in western Queensland.

Those people did not want to interface directly with me on many occasions. I had to have black people—black Australians, if you like to use that expression—that I interfaced with, and then they interfaced with the local first Australians—Aboriginal people, if you like—who then interfaced with the local community. So you needed communication through four stages to really get the message on many occasions. There was no short way. Simply spending the time on the ground with these people was the only way to come up with the answers that they wanted.

I find it extraordinary that I constantly hear about native title and tribal ownership. All of these concepts that prevail in this place and in the Queensland parliament now are concepts that, quite frankly, are not wanted by the people. When I became the minister for Aboriginal affairs in Queensland, I became the owner of six million acres—all very good country with annual rainfall of more than 25 inches. It included the land opposite Cairns and Trinity Inlet, which is some of the most valuable land in Queensland. Yarrabah, for example, has some of the most valuable real estate in the state. As minister, I had inherited all this land. I owned it, in the sense that the Governor in Council appointed the legal owners of these Aboriginal reserves.

So we went out to the people and said, `At the present time, the government owns this six million acres. It is not right or proper, moral or legal, that we should continue to own this land. What do you want?' They asked, `What are the options?' We put up the options: they could have tribal council ownership; they could have land council ownership, because the land councils were already going in those days; they could have a continuation of government ownership; they could have all the councils from Cape York Peninsula or the gulf owning the land collectively; they could have their local council owning the land; or they could own the land themselves, privately—each individual's own family could own the land. Surprise, surprise: out of the 3,800 people that the proposition was put to, only three did not want to own the land privately. Would you have got any other result if you had asked other Australians—or Russians or Bullamakankans? Surprise, surprise: that was what they wanted. Is that what they got? No. The governments and the parliaments of Australia have told them that they need native title ownership of land.

If you are close to these people and they trust you, they will tell you that this is a migaloo—a migaloo is a whitefella—plot. It most certainly has been enormously successful in getting all the black Australians to hate each other. If it was a device to divide and conquer, it has been enormously successful. At Yarrabah we had the incredible situation where the original tribe took out an injunction against the building of any houses because they were to be built on their land. So we had no houses at Yarrabah for three or four years because we were finding a way through this injunction.

I was told in no uncertain terms at the Innot Hot Springs Hotel about three years ago by a group of first Australians that I had been a party to this plot to get them to all kill each other. They were very aggressive about it, I can tell you. One of the five or six most prominent leaders in Australia said exactly the same thing to me at the Mining Council dinner some years ago. Both some ordinary people in the street and one of the highest people in Aboriginal affairs had an idea in the back of their heads that this land ownership arrangement was so bad that it was actually a plot for them to get rid of each other. They talked about the old days and the police. It was sadly true in Queensland that most of the police that were responsible for the punishment—and there are a lot of words we could use here—that resulted in the deaths of many, many Aboriginal people were black police. The police force in Cloncurry, which was involved in outright warfare with the Kalkadoon tribe, was wiped out. The entire police force of 15 was wiped out by the Kalkadoon. All the members of that police force—bar one—were of Aboriginal descent.

The lack of communication would break the heart of any patriotic Australian—it is a total lack of communication. Has anyone from this place gone to Doomadgee, where we have nearly 17 people in each house? Those who go there pass very harsh judgment upon Doomadgee. I am sure that if you put nearly 20 people in every home in Townsville, Mr Deputy Speaker, the houses would not be in a very good condition. A house that is designed to take four people is taking nearly 20 people. The young man who is the CEO there, Troy Fraser—he is a man of outstanding abilities and I pay him a very great tribute—has done everything humanly possible. He has reformed the local rugby league team, getting them to travel 1,000 kilometres almost every time they have to play a game in the mid-west. Of course, I was heavily involved myself.

Troy's father was the CEO there before him and also the chairman of the council when I was the minister. I said to Troy: `Your father was building 17 houses a year here. How many are we building now?' He said, `Two.' I said, `Well, you're getting the same amount of money'—which is probably between $300,000 and $500,000 a year—and he said, `Yes, but I can't do it; I can only build two houses.' I said: `Why aren't you using CDEP? Your father used work for the dole. He rang me and said that everybody else had a block-making machine and he wanted one there. As minister, I wrote out a cheque for $85,000 and he got his block-making machine. So he was getting the bricks for virtually no cost at all, because they were being built by CDEP labour, and all the bricklaying for the houses was done by the local CDEP work force. So he was able to produce 17 houses a year. Why can't you do that now?' Troy said: `I've tried, Bob. But the national competition policy says we've got to call for tenders and we just end up with white contractors who fly in, slap a house together and fly out again, taking all the money with them.'

So we have moved from a situation where there were 30 or 40 jobs locally building houses—people being given pride and respect. Surely, if someone from here had gone to Doomadgee they would have realised the problem and done something about it. But nobody here has gone to Doomadgee. I go to these places. I said, `Haven't you spoken to the state minister about this?' I rang Gerry Hand, and Gerry said, `Great idea, Bob; we'll do it.' It was as simple as that. Troy Fraser's father, Don Fraser, rang me, the minister. I answered the telephone. He had no hesitation in ringing me, because he knew me well; I had been up there dozens and dozens of times. He had great confidence in being able to ring me up and talk to me. I just rang up Gerry Hand—and I pay that man respect, because I think he did a good job—and he said, `Yes, we'll do it.' I assume almost every community at the time had block-making machines. They met exactly the same specifications as Besser. Every thousandth brick was sent to Brisbane for testing. They had to meet exactly the same specifications as Besser met.

The road into Doomadgee is out for some two or three months of the year on average. This is a community of 2,000 people with no communication with the outside world. There is no food produced locally at all. They have set up some sort of privately owned station but they cannot get any title deeds and so they cannot borrow any money off the bank to develop it or buy cattle to put on it.

I am not here to condemn ATSIC. I can see the very great problems that they had in the process. I am not here to defend them and I am not here to condemn them one way or the other. But I want to say this. In North Queensland, the first Australians own almost as much land as Stanbroke Pastoral Company or the AA Company—the two biggest pastoral companies in Australia. Both of those companies are making profits of around $100 million a year. For the 10,000 people of Aboriginal descent living on the gulf and the peninsula, that would work out to maybe—I do not know—$40,000 or $50,000 per family on top of what they are already getting.

These people have the wherewithal and the resources to be rich Australians. But they are not. The reason they are not is that they do not actually own those stations at all. In one of the most contemptible acts that I have seen—and I have seen many contemptible acts in 33 years—the Queensland Labor government reversed the legislation that the black people of Queensland asked me to put through. Each of the six million acres was owned by the local shire council—an arrangement which, again, I set up as minister, at the direction of black people. I would have been skinned alive if I had not. If you have to go and live in these places with these people you want to deliver to them what they want. So ownership of the land was moved to the local shire council, with a mechanism to devolve it to private ownership. The incoming Labor government, for reasons that to this very moment have never been established and that precipitated the worst rioting in Queensland parliamentary history, took the six million acres back.

The owners of that six million acres now are trustees appointed at the discretion of the minister. I inherited legislation under which the ownership of the land was appointed by the Governor in Council. Now it is not even appointed by the Governor in Council; it is appointed just by the minister. So whoever is the minister for Aboriginal affairs in Queensland is the proud owner of six million acres of land. The people were dispossessed and they staged the worst rioting in Queensland parliamentary history. Did anyone listen to them then? Did a single person from the Queensland government walk through the fence, as I did, and say, `What's this all about, fellas?' A lot of change is needed. (Time expired)