Letter to the Editor

Canberra Comment for Mount Isa's North West Star, by Kennedy MP Bob Katter: 

As great Mount Isa bloke Bobbie Glanville once said: ‘Keep sticking your head in the ground like an ostrich, and you’ll get a backside full of Indian arrows.’

Let’s face it, we’re in the fight of our lives for the copper stream and fertiliser plant.

I doubt there’d be three days where the State Member for Mount Isa Robbie Katter and myself have not been in discussions with someone. I couldn’t get out of flying all the way to Melbourne and meeting with the bosses of Incitec Pivot, and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg.

And bluntly, unless the Qld Government grants some strategic gas mining tenements to Incitec Pivot, Mount Isa Mines and associated groups, then the price of gas (which sadly also underpins the price of electricity in the Isa) renders both operations non-competitive on the world market.

Now, the State Government has refused to have any Reserved Resources policy (which the much-maligned Bjelke-Petersen Government did have, of course, to quarantine some of our resources to provide the cheapest electricity in the world and facilitate the growth of our Qld industries).

But if they’re not going to do the right thing – and continue to treat with utter contempt the trade union advocates, representatives of the minor political parties and, infinitely more importantly, the hard-working people of Qld whose livelihoods depend upon competitively-priced electricity – then the Minister Federally is seriously considering (and has given me four meetings so far on this subject, but we’ve got no final agreement on) the removal of RETs.

These Renewable Energy Target environmental charges impose a $25 million cost that’s been dropped like a napalm bomb on top of our mines and processing operations, in turn threatening the livelihoods of every person in what has been, to date, Australia’s only big inland city outside NSW and Victoria.

I do not want to go into attack mode. But I cannot go much longer without moving the attack into Parliament.

The two burning issues are the removal of RETs where an industry is in grave and imminent danger; and the granting of some strategic gas mining tenements (which is exactly what we did in a similar situation when I was Minister for Mining in Qld) – and I commend the leadership of Mount Isa Mines and Incitec Pivot on these two issues.

Source: http://www.northweststar.com.au/story/4816766/do-that-and-youll-get-a-backside-full-of-arrows-bob-katter-mp/