Media Release

THE Australian sugar industry is walking the road to perdition, Kennedy MP Bob Katter has warned after learning the 126-year-old Maryborough sugar mill will close permanently at the end of the crushing season.

“Here is what is happening to your country. A very clear technicality – the industry is closing down,” Mr Katter said.

“Jobs are being transferred overseas and every time a mill closes in Australia, Thailand, Europe, India and Brazil do somersaults of happiness and joy.

“The sugar industry will close and will be replaced by trees which use fly in, fly out Pacific Islanders, to harvest. There is no industrial side to crops, no processing so no industry with it.

“And so the profits that once went into the pocket of the mill workers, the harvest and haul-out operators, and the diesel fitters – the money that went to them will now flow into the pockets of the Sydney slithering suits; the corporates, who own and control the farming corporations.”

Mr Katter blamed successive government failures for the industry demise.

“Both the ALP and the Liberals are to blame here but the latter started this regime of terror against the sugar industry with Robert Hill’s run off controls as Liberal Minister for the Environment. And the ALP is most certainly delivering the “coup de grace”.

“It is a magnificent metaphor for what is happening in the economies of Australia.

“The Government, in almost every case, provided the money for those sugar mills to establish the industry and create jobs. Most of the corporate farms collapsed, having precipitated over production whether it be mangoes or almond nuts or tea tree oil, but the sharks of Sydney, they’ve fed well on the tax dodgers that sold to their Piketty-brotherhood who rob the superannuation funds.

“There are three other mills scheduled to close over the next six to seven years so there is no doubt that what is actually happening is the entire industry is closing down.

“We just can’t compete against the cross subsidy from ethanol, unlike Brazil, Europe and Thailand. Our two major parties cry and howl about saving the planet from CO2, yet the first solution in ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ written by the Greenies Patron Saint, Al Gore, is stated as being ethanol. But of course that suits the major parties’ ‘save the planet, anti-farming’ agenda.

“There are only 20-odd mills left in Queensland and unless political parties such as the KAP are given the balance of power, they remain doomed.”

ENDS