Media Release

KAP Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter has supported the Government’s MIGRATION LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (REGIONAL PROCESSING COHORT) BILL 2016. The proposal seeks to ban asylum seekers who attempt to enter the country illegally from ever entering Australia.

Mr Katter tore down the Chamber during debate on the bill yesterday, “I heard the previous speaker get up in this place and talk about 'these poor people, these poor refugees'. A refugee is not a person that looks at a globe of the world and picks a country on the other side of the globe and says, 'I'm going to flee to there.' A refugee is a person that flees for his life across the border.

“There were 12 million to 15 million refugees after the Second World War; they were all from neighboring countries. The refugees fleeing Burma, or whatever it calls itself now, fled to Malaysia. You flee across the border. You do not pick a spot on the other side of the globe to go to. That is not fleeing; you are going somewhere that you want to go to.

“Why do they want to come here? These people are coming from countries where they are on $5,000-a-year incomes. On welfare here, if you have a couple of kids, you are entitled to $60,000 a year. Why wouldn't they come here? Two and a half thousands of them have died trying to get here. The previous speaker said, 'You are putting these people at risk.' I tell you what is putting them at risk. It is you saying, 'Yes, you can come in.'

“After the last attempt at mass killing (Home Hill ), which was on the edge of the Kennedy electorate—some of the people working there were actually from the Kennedy electorate and the town is two kilometres outside the Kennedy electorate—I said, 'Well, that is it for me. There are no more people coming in from the Middle East.

“I am sorry but it is too risky bringing in new people from North Africa and from the Middle East into this country.

“We accept, of course, the persecuted minority groups who are obviously persecuted there—the Sikhs, the Jews, and the Christians. We do not include them in the ban. You say that is anti-Muslim. No, it is not. I did not mention the biggest Muslim country on earth, which is Indonesia. I did not say anything about Indonesia. They do not have any terrorists in Albania; I did not say anything about Albania, and it is a Muslim country. It is not against Muslims. It is against countries that have a culture and a continuous history of extreme violence.”