Media Release

18 September 2017: KAP Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has been left fuming after reading a report issued by the Transport Workers Union which revealed that up to $100 billion is at risk of being wiped from every day Australian’s retirement incomes, as corporations cut wages and force employees out of long-standing enterprise agreements – all in a bid to line the pockets of shareholders.

Mr Katter labelled the report as ‘sickening’ and stated that privatisation was to blame.

“There you go: privatisation,” Mr Katter said.

“Aurizon – they privatised the railways in Qld which had 22,000 employees when the Bjelke-Petersen Government fell. 22,000 employees and next to no-one was ever put off.

“Under privatisation and National Competition Policy (and under Labor Government I might add), 22,000 dropped to 7,000.

“In the meantime, the head of Aurizon, who used to be a public servant on $320k a year, convinces the Government to privatise and proceeds to pay himself $6m a year.

“This obscenity pales by comparison to Alan Joyce, who turns out is effectively privatising Qantas, is paying himself $25m a year. While Qantas workers are ‘restructured’, flights out of Mt Isa to Townsville cost nearly $2,000 and aviation companies such as Aerocare effectively force their workers to sleep in third world conditions in the baggage areas.

“The heads of banks in the 90s were all being paid around $750k, now they all pay themselves around $10m a year.”

Mr Katter confirmed he would raise the issue of exploding executive salaries as a matter of priority when Parliament resumes in October, through a Private Members Bill.

“This is going on while most Australians have never seen levels of poverty like this in 30 years.

“15% of the country who can only get part time work – or worse still, can’t get a job at all.

“And in the Great Depression, those rates were around 21%.

“The CFMEU did the work and discovered that a further 20% of the workforce does not have a secure job.

“In the coal mining industry they switched to contractual work and when the contracting company loses the contract, someone else bids with their workers taking 30% pay cuts.

“Between the casualisation of labor and section 457 visas, most of the trade unions should be ashamed of themselves. It was the CFMEU which had to do all the work to fight s475 visas which was replicated by Labor – 155k fly-in workers coming in every year taking our jobs and undermining our pay and conditions.

“They say that the Australians won’t work. Well we must’ve got some disease in the last 15 years because 15 years ago there were no foreign workers allowed in.

“And it was the ALP that was responsible.

“I speak in great praise of Tony Sheldon and the Transport Workers Union (TWU). This is one issue where the TWU deserves the highest of praise.

“The TWU is dead right here and we plead with people to realise the necessity of unionism and this is a perfect case to demonstrate that… we can’t trust employers to always do the right thing.”

Mr Katter warned, “Anyone thinks it is bad now, it is just going to get worse and worse and worse.”

##ENDS##