Political veteran Bob Katter has blown up on live television over the government's failure to build more guns and missiles.
Mr Katter launched into an impassioned spray while taking part on the ABC’s Q&A panel on Thursday night.
Responding to questions about a security pact between China and the Solomon Islands, Mr Katter launched into an unrestrained tirade for which he has become well known.
He slammed the government for failing to develop arms to defend against perceived threats from China.
“In four and a half years you haven't built a rifle, a machine gun, you’ve stupidly built patrol boats that have got one machine gun on ’em,” he said.
“Jeez, that’ll terrify the Chinese, having that machine gun on those patrol boats. $60 million for a patrol boat that has a machine gun on it. It should have had 40 missiles on it.”
“That‘s a hell of a patrol boat,” Liberal MP Keith Pitt interjected.
Mr Katter said he strongly believed Solomon Islands would become a “base for China” as a result of the treaty and called those that didn’t “naive”.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said this week the purpose of the treaty was to “promote social stability and long-term peace and security in Solomon Islands”.
Amanda Cahill, chief executive for a group called The Next Economy, said China’s development spending in the Pacific had translated into deeper economic ties with the region.
“I worked in international development at the time. Within two and a half years the built environment changed in Fiji because China was coming in building hospitals, roads, schools, and it was really marked on the landscape,” she said.
“In return, they were getting rights to minerals and fishing rights and also land to build quite large industrial piggeries and things like that.”
The ABC panel program was filmed at Gladstone in Queensland, near where the drama over a Tamil family’s quest for asylum in Biloela had played out.
Community members questioned the panel on whether the family, who are in community detention in Perth following a failed deportation attempt and incarceration on Christmas Island, should be allowed to return to their adopted home town.
Despite widespread community support for the family’s return, the government has not allowed them back.
Queensland Senator Murray Watt said Labor’s position was that the faxjmtzywmily should be allowed to return to Biloela.
“This is a community that wants this family back. This country is screaming out for meat workers and other skilled workers. Their dad is a meat worker. He was working in the meat working plants in Bilo before he was taken away. The mum was volunteering at St Vinnies,” Senator Watt said.
“They were doing everything that anyone ever asks a refugee to do in this country. They were loved by the community.
Liberal Minister Keith Pitt was booed by the audience when he said despite personally feeling for the family, Australia had to remain consistent in its immigration policy.
“I understand the challenges. I absolutely get it. But that consistency has protected this country it really has. And we’ll continue to support it,” he said.
