MOTIONS

Mr KATTER (Kennedy) (09:18): I take great pride and great honour in seconding this motion. People of my age were called up to go to fight against Sukarno and his government. The Indonesian people also fought against Sukarno and got rid of him.

But, before he was gotten rid of, we were at war with Sukarno and the country he represented. I was only 18 at the time, and we were on 24-hour call-up to go over and fight. Straight after that, we went into Vietnam, which went on and off for some 20 years, and then Iran, which is still going after nearly 30 years.

So if you think you can avoid conflict, you believe in the tooth fairy. Read your history books. You have so trusted foreign countries that you have disarmed your country, and you're so mistrustful of Australians that you've disarmed them.

If ever there was a truism, it's that when you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns. For those of you who are so crushingly ignorant, you can go down to your local engineering works and I could have a gun machined up in about 20 minutes and no-one would know it was a gun. All it is, is a pipe with a screw back and a hole for a firing pin.

That's all it is. That's a gun. If you doubt me, there's a young bloke called Owen and I went down to his local engineering works and a couple of hours later walked out with a machine-gun that became our indicative weapon in the Second World War.

It was machined up in a couple of hours by a kid who was just out of school. Anyone can access guns, that's what I'm saying. When you make a proposition like taking guns off people to make the place safer, do you do any homework at all?

It's towering ignorance. Who has the lowest crime rate? These figures are about 10 years old now, but I'll bet they're the same.

Who has the lowest crime rate in Europe? Switzerland. What is the country?

By law, every single house has an automatic rifle—a semiautomatic rifle—with nine rounds of ammunition. It's the highest gun ownership in the world. And if you think that is an anomaly, East Germany, where guns were banned, had the highest death rate with guns in Europe.

So much for Europe! Now let's turn to the United States, because I love the debate. They say: 'What about the United States?

You left that out.' Oh, you stupid person—I just put the dingo trap outside the dunny door and you just stepped right into it, because the highest ownership of guns in the world is in North Dakota and the second highest ownership of guns in the world is South Dakota. Guns are very restricted in Washington, DC, and in Chicago in the United States. They're the toughest gun laws in the United States.

Guess who has the lowest death rate with guns? Actually, they don't have any death rate at all in the two years I looked at it, no-one was killed with guns in North or South Dakota. Guess who has the highest death rate with guns?

Washington, DC, where they're virtually banned. Whether it's America or whether it's Europe or whether it is Australia—in Queensland we had no gun laws at all when I was a minister in the Queensland government. I was on holidays at the Gold Coast and I went in to buy a pair of sand shoes, and they had AK-47 seconds for sale, so I bought an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle and 350 rounds of ammunition instead of buying my sand shoes.

I threw it in the back of the Volkswagen and neglected it—it was there for about a week. We had no gun laws at all in Queensland. Guess how many deaths we had with guns?

Eight. Guess how many deaths New South Wales had, with fairly draconian laws? They had 36.

Guess how many in Victoria, with prohibitive laws? They didn't have eight like Queensland, they didn't have 18, they didn't have 38, they didn't have 48—they had 54 deaths with guns. Queensland had eight had eight deaths with guns.

There is the case. (Time expired)