Media Release

KENNEDY MP, Bob Katter says the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) should be sacked over his recommendation that Meritorious Unit Citations be stripped from our special forces in Afghanistan, and that the CDF’s actions had left Australia open to the vicious Chinese Govt. attack upon our soldiers.

Mr Katter, whose electorate includes the fortress city of Townsville and the naval centre of Cairns, said General Campbell had opened the door for the denigration of his own troops.

“The door was opened by the leader who was meant to be defending his troops,” he said.

“The leader should sacrifice himself for his soldiers, not the other way around. Unless the Federal Government goes down the path I’m outlining and reverses the CDF’s decision and removes him from his position, then they too will have this deserved shame brought upon them.”

Mr Katter laid part of the blame for the imagery the Chinese Communist Party had posted to Twitter at the feet of the CDF.

“We love the Chinese people, but they have a rogue government. 35 percent of our export trade is to China, so for heaven’s sake divest and aggressively target the V.I.P countries – Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.”

Mr Katter said Australia must bolster our defence force or be condemned to repeat what the First Australians suffered 240 years ago.

“Australia must arm itself with ‘defensive’ weaponry – 300 missile equipped patrol boats, will cost 2.5 per cent of Government spending,” he said.

“In the late 1930s, Winston Churchill was crying out about the Nazi danger. No-one listened to him. Now we know who was right and who was wrong. We all know he said ‘fight them on the beaches’, but he also said, ‘when you try to cross that water for every naval gun you have, we will have 30 naval guns. For every fighter plane you have, we have a fighter plane, so just try and cross that water’.”

“Australia is a vast, expansive, resource-rich landscape and yet no one is living on it. We have no way to defend it. We need patrol boats, missiles, an army, weaponry and must build it up to defend ourselves. We are a bunch of Europeans occupying only 5 percent of our continental land which is one of the most resource-rich parts of the world. We should have a population of 60 to 70 million people and a capable army, but we are an empty nation. A people without land will seek a land without people.

“Australia’s current defence force is severely under resourced, meaning that China sees us as a drought-stricken lamb, and not as a fearsome cassowary or boxing kangaroo capable of defending itself.”
—ENDS—