Defence advice

In response to Ross Eastgate TB 2627/ Nov.

As a resident of Australia’s fortress city and as a member of a family that sacrificed sons in the first and second World War I am one of the three most qualified people in this country to advise on our defences.

We need essential services; in an emergency, we would have at most, a week and a half of fuel supply. Who knows who owns the water, but the two biggest licenses are held by China. China would own nearly 60 per cent of the electricity industry as well as our strategic port – Darwin.

My question to parliament was how can you justify spending

$4000m on a dozen patrol boats and drones whilst their total ordinance is 15 machine guns. That’s $4000m for 15 machine guns.

The other two most qualified people said missiles – 200,000 are required, we probably don’t even have 200.

We will be moving in parliament, retired Lt Colonel Andrew Wilkie and myself, a fuel security bill that moves Australia from 3 per cent selfsufficiency to nearly 100 per cent.

I shall also be moving for a housing authority with an armed forces directorate to enable land resumptions (albeit at twice market value) which will provide every soldier who is prepared to make salary sacrifices of $75 a week, earning full ownership of their home in six-and-a-half years, costing the Federal budget a measly $7m a year.

To ask our armed forces to defend the country without any missile protection is a repetition of the last war, when the Japanese were 12 days away from the invasion of Australia.

They ordered three battalions, including mine, to take on the Japanese with one machine gun. The Japanese had 600 machine guns.

No thanks to the politicians and we the stupid people who put them there, we made this mistake 250 years ago when our faces were black, and we’ve learned nothing.

BOB KATTER, Member for Kennedy