Media Release

KAP Federal Leader and Member for Kennedy Bob Katter gave a passionate and rousing speech to approximately 300 people at the bi-annual Indigenous Leaders’ Forum held on Palm Island today.

Mr Katter said that he had started his book, An Incredible Race of People, with a saying he had heard from Clarence Walden, then Doomadgee Shire Councillor, in a confrontation with a State Government official.

“You don’t come ‘ere and say what’s what and dat’s dat. Dis mah lan… Dis mah lan.”

Mr Katter attacked successive Governments’ policies towards First Australian communities, which he said had failed to even attempt to fix the underlying problems.

“The Prime Minister said he was going to Close the Gap, well after two years of the Gap widening he is now saying we won’t have any community areas at all, we’ll close them down,” Mr Katter said.

“But why do the community areas drink – because we have no hope.

“If you can’t own your own house, what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning?

“If you can’t own your own little cattle station, what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning?

“If they took away from the people of Cairns or the people of Townsville the right to private property, then they would be faring no better than the rest of us are faring.

“But instead of dealing with the root cause, they just want to put a band aid over the sore.

“And they’re not going to give you antibiotics to kill the sore, they’ll put a band aid over it so you can’t see the sore.”

Mr Katter spoke passionately about his time as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs when Title Deeds were first distributed in consultation with communities who developed the framework. He credited Lester Rosendale from Hopevale and Eric Laws from Townsville for achieving much of the success of the scheme.

“If you’re going to address land ownership, the first thing you do is ask the people what they want, and that’s what we did,” Mr Katter said.

“It’s not right that the Government should decide who owns it – it’s your land.

“We ultimately handed the land over to the local Councils to decide who they parcel it out to – and if you didn’t like the decision then there was an appeal to a tribunal – a Magistrate, three elders of the community and one Government representative.

“Under Rosendale and Laws over 760 Title Deeds went out, yet in the 25 years since there hasn’t been more than two dozen that have gone out.

“So 25 years that the white fellas in Brisbane have given no Title Deeds – no one is allowed to own his own home, his own land, his own cattle station.

“They’ve all said they’re ‘gunnado it, well we’re not interested in ‘gunnados’, we’re interested in what’s been done.

“The decision has got to be made by us in our own local communities.

“So go to bed at night, say your prayers and say dis mah lan.

“Cause some white fella in Brisbane is not going to say what’s going to happen in Kowanyama.”

Mr Katter also attacked the ban on alcohol in Aboriginal communities.

“Every person in this room whether they’re black or white or pink in colour, should never accept the proposition that one group of people have a separate set of laws put upon them on racial grounds.

“You go into Laura you can have a beer, you go into Hopevale you can’t.

“There’s no explanation for that except one is a black fella community and one is a white fella community.

“We can’t survive as a people and as a nation if we have this separation, we are not going to accept that,” Mr Katter said.

Mr Katter said that he wanted to use the ‘dis mah lan’ conviction as a battering ram to get the changes that First Australians need for survival.

“We’re crying about 2 drug traffickers in Indonesia, well how about crying about us First Australians, when we’re dying of diabetes, a technical name for what is really malnutrition, a lack of proper diet.

“If you have the sort of incomes we have – in the Doomadgees, the Pormpuraaws, the Mornington Islands, the Torres Straits, the Kowanyamas – then you can’t afford to buy fresh fruit and vegetables because by the time they arrive, they’re either too expensive or too worn out.

“I asked one Council recently and every single Councillor had a relative dying of diabetes.”

Mr Katter also spoke of the work for the dole programs in Aboriginal communities in the late 1980s, which resulted in local work force building community housing as well as opening a brick making facility, and paid tribute to Greg Wallace and Gerhardt Pearson, both driving forces behind the initiatives.

“If you’re going to get contractors in, you’ve got to pay living away from home allowance, you’ve got to provide board and food, you’ve got to fly them in, and it doubles the cost,” Mr Katter said.

“But if you use local labour then you half the cost, and there’s another huge saving in another wave of employment in our local community.

“There were 700 jobs created under that scheme, we had enough money to build 400 houses, in fact we built 2,000.”

Mr Katter ultimately paid tribute to the leaders of times past – Laws, Rosendale, Wallace and Pearson – and encouraged the current generation of leadership to seize the power.

“It was the hallmark of their leadership that they were blokes that made it happen, because they had seized the power.

“So what we need to do is seize the power.

“And you’ve got Billy Gordon – I’m sure Robbie Katter and Shane Knuth will stick with Billy and if they do they’ve got more power than the Premier of Queensland.”

Ultimately Mr Katter finished his speech as he had started.

“We from Cloncurry call ourselves the Curry mob, we come from the Kalkadoon heritage.

“At the end of the day you stand up and you fight.

“And you pray to the lord, and you say dis mah lan, dis mah lan.

“I hope to god every person in this room leaves with that conviction,” Mr Katter said.

Photo: Bob Katter with Indigenous Mayors as well as Councillor Margaret de Wit, President of Local Government Association of Qld (photo credit Anne Pleash).