Media Release

9 May 2017: KAP Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter has commented on the 2017-18 budget which is full of ‘looking into’ projects.

Infrastructure

Western Sydney Airport

$75b in infrastructure spending over the next 10 years

$844m for Bruce Highway ($530m of this for Pine Rivers to Caloundra – SE Qld).

$1.6b for WA.

$1b for regional rail in Victoria.

$10b National rail program.

$8.4b Melbourne to Brisbane Rail

“$75b in infrastructure and not one more permanent job created. Nothing in here for Nth Qld projects – the “make-money” permanent jobs. The $7b which has already been allocated for Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund – provides nothing over the next 12 months. So there is nothing, not a single significant item for Nth Qld in the next 12 months.

“Government spending fits into three categories: Firstly, spending on self-indulgence (vote winning e.g. big city tunnels and motor ways), secondly, spending on needs (hospitals, defence, police, education) and thirdly, wealth creation development “make-money” spending.

This spending falls into category one, self-indulgence and is the equivalent of deciding to air-condition the living room rather than water the bottom paddock.

Even when the Government talks about water development, they mention dams like Nullinga, which is an urban water supply, not a nation-building project. In Nth Qld the North Johnstone transfer for $10m will secure you 10,000 hectares of irrigation farmland. Nullinga would cost $500m and be flat out creating 5,000 hectares of irrigation.

There is not one dollar in this project for the four great projects (“make-money projects” as opposed to “transferred money”) for Hells Gates, Galilee railine, YIPIPI waterway (which opens up the giant phosphate fertiliser resources of the greater Mt Isa/Northern Territory border region), and Cape York Silicon.”

Northern Australia Insurance Affordability

$7.9m over 4 years to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to monitor and report on insurance prices in Northern Australia.

“We don’t want to know we are being shafted, nor by how long the shaft is.

The houses that were ‘go-able’ – have gone. The fact that Nth Qlders whose houses survived two of the worst cyclones ever, should be charged and suffer this huge cost imposition of Nth Qld house insurance premiums is appalling.

There is no way out of this except by a Government insurance body. Like a Government bank, it is the policeman and it will provide an actuarial looking forward, instead of the current looking backwards insurance charges.”

Banking and Finance

Australian Financial Complaints Authority - one-stop shop for financial complaints.

New Banking Accountability Regime – will require all senior executives to register with APRA. If in breach they can be deregistered and stripped of bonuses.

Increased fines for banks starting at $50m for small banks and $200m for large banks.

Permanent team within the ACCC to be established for competition in banking sector.

“We have already got the ombudsmans in plague proportions. To use an expression from my old cattle industry days ‘they are as useful as mammary glands on a bull’. So we are going to be putting out a lot more money to have a lot more of them.

Rally this is about, to bleed off steam placating all of us demanding a Royal Commission.”

Banking Levy - raises $6.2b over 4 years to support budget repair.

“The $6.2B Levy is good, instead of cutting welfare they are going to hit the bank’s obscene profits. With the levy, they have to find money from somewhere - that is how the liberals look at the world, with their obsession with balanced budgets.”

Regions

New Regional Growth Fund $472m over 4 years. $200m of this to go into the existing Building Better Regions programme.

“We want our people in Nth Qld to put forward aggressive and sophisticated applications and we plead with people that regardless of their political views they ensure they have the backing of the three levels of Government for these applications. We are not getting our fair share here, and it is partly our fault.”

$250m Nth Qld Stadium in Townsville – jointly funded.

“I’m sorry I didn’t put an application in for our Rugby League oval in Hughenden. Whilst to me Rugby League is more important, most people would consider the Hughenden Irrigation Development Corporation’s irrigation proposal even more important. Every Townsville person would have said that getting water supply to their houses was more important than a football stadium. Compare Hell’s Gates’ 25,000 permanent jobs or Hughenden HUDCC irrigation proposal versus nil benefit from a new stadium. But we should thank the Cowboy’s administration, without them we would have got nothing out of the budget.

Welfare and Social Services

Payment for increased energy costs - veterans, pensioners, and some recipients of social services payments will receive a one off payment to account for rising energy costs. The payment will be $75 for single persons and $125 for couples.

“Very good. Getting the payment is a result of the Xenophon Party getting small businesses a tax cut. The tax cut now goes to small businesses instead of large corporate foreign businesses and demonstrates the great value of the third force in politics and how in spite of small numbers, how enormously effective they can be. Rebekah Sharkie and leader Nick Xenophon deserve praise.”

Energy and Resources

$86.3m to secure access to gas resources for domestic use.

ACCC to launch investigation into electricity and gas market competition.

$28.7m over 4 years. Through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) a model land access agreement will be developed to assist landowners in negotiating access, compensation and remuneration agreements with onshore gas operators.

“Most of the people involved in agriculture have spent the last 20 years fighting against the gas industry they hardly think the Government should be providing a $30m subsidy to corporations to make up for the Government’s fanatical fascination with free-marketism. This of course is a refusal to implement a ‘Reserve Resource Policy’ and a refusal to return to a regulatory system for electricity. Another $100m for looking into.”

Migration

Previously employers had to contribute an amount equal to 1-2% of payroll to training if they employed foreign workers. This has been replaced by an annual foreign worker levy.

$1,200 or $1,800 per worker per year on temporary work visas

$3,000 or $5,000 one-off levy for those on permanent skilled visas

This will raise $1.2b over the next four years which will be put into a new Commonwealth-State Skilling Australians Fund.

“It is further evidence that the Government is ‘going to keep’ the section 457 visa workers system going. They led the Australian people, including myself, to believe they were going to abolish it. They are keeping 150,000 coming in each year to take our jobs and undermine our pay and conditions.”

Health

Additional $115m for mental health (including rural telehealth psychological services). This includes $9.1m over 4 years from 2017-18 to increase psychological services to those in rural and remote areas.

“This will be the classic band-aid over an advanced melanoma. We want the causes removed – the free market polices which have destroyed inland Australia. That would cut the cancer out. “

Preventative Health – PM’s Walk for Life Challenge - $10m over 4 years for this event designed to raise awareness of the benefits of physical activities.

“We could laugh, but I think that this is good. When I informed people in my electorate, they suggested the PM and his colleagues do the walk from Kynuna to the Murunji track. We are still looking for Burke and Wills and if they discovery Burke and Wills along the way – could they please notify authorities.

Q Fever – funding for production of Q Fever vaccine

“This is vitally important for us as Q Fever has been going undiagnosed and people have been dying. Q Fever is a lot more common than people think. Please God, we will get irrigation and with it get quartering works throughout our Gulf and Mid-west towns. This means that people on farms who kill their own stock (and those that kills their neighbour’s stock) will have Q Fever vaccine protection available. All jokes aside, Q Fever is serious and this is good.”

Higher Education

Student fees for university students will increase by 1.8% next year and will increase by 7.5% by 2021. The represents an increase of $2,000 to $3,600 on average for a four-year course.

Student loans (HELP/HECS) will have to be paid earlier, with the income threshold at which students will start repaying their fees being lowered from $54,869 to approx. $42,000. Students will have to repay between 1% and 10% per year depending on their income.

“The idea that any society can carry a third of the population doing studies that in the day and age of the computer are often utterly irrelevant is dangerous. Australia is rapidly becoming an economy in which a quarter of the population is carried by that third of we Australians who actually work.

Almost every trade seems to be turning themselves into a university course. What was 8th grade in my father’s day, was 12th grade in my day, and now what is expected of everyone is a three to five year university course to complete your education, which is regarded as the right and privilege of everyone. A very foolish society can believe they can afford this sort of indulgence.

In my day most of us worked in the mines during the annual four month university vacation and these earnings were enough to carry you for the rest of the year, this is not available to young people today. Most of the university loans are not being repaid, nor will they be repaid. You really had to reach a certain high academic marker to be allowed into a university course in my day.

It was Whitlam’s stupidity to believe that everyone should be allowed to go down there and do what most of them did in my day, which was chase sheilas and argue politics and religion. That was great fun but we paid our way by doing hard yakka in the mines.”

Housing Affordability

• $1b National Housing Infrastructure Facility to fund micro city deals that remove infrastructure impediments to developing new homes.

“The satellite city concepts is there to featherbed the big developments. Can’t they ever think in terms of the little farmer who wants to break up his 200 acres, which he can’t make a quid off into 5 acre blocks. Superannuation for the farmer and civilised and afforadable lifestyle for the blockies-young families.”

• New National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation will provide low-cost finance to support more affordable rental housing.

“What the Government creating is an increased demand for housing without any effective action upon the supply side. This is very ironic when Turnbull himself with an Oxford Professor said the problem is on the supply side. Restrictions on land sub-divisions cause five to six year choke-hold delays.”

School Funding

The Government is introducing a “needs-based funding model” to replace the existing arrangements whereby agreements for the amount of school funding were entered into between the Federal Government and states, territories and others. Funding will increase by $18.6 billion from current levels by 2026. Although some schools stand to receive increased funding from this proposal, numerous schools, stand to see funding per student decreased.

“There will be a tendency to squeeze out the Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran schools, very few of which are elitist schools. We are very worried about the Government’s initiatives here.”

Veterans’ Affairs

Gold card for veterans - $133m has been put towards covering the ongoing medical costs of veterans who were exposed to radiation nuclear weapons tests while they were in the armed forces.

Suicide prevention - $350m to help veterans with mental health, suicide prevention and alcohol/substance abuse.

“Very good initiative. Large number of the Defence Force personnel retire on the Paradise Coast and Atherton Tablelands.”

Biosecurity

$200m over 4 years from 2015-16 for biosecurity surveillance.

“I mean biosecurity is a farce. It is just a branch of the Department of Free Trade. In fact one of their chiefs moved over to become the head of the Department of Trade. This was not irony, it was grim reality. As the Northern farmers say, AQIS is spelt wrong - it should be spelt ‘acquiesce’. Ask the prawn farmers now with whitespot and the banana farmers with Panama disease, AQIS = acquiesce.”

Commodity Milk Price Index

$2m over 4 years to provide greater transparency on domestic and global dairy prices to support farmers.

“What absolute farce. Pre-deregulation our farmers in terms of 2017 dollars were getting 90c a litre, they are now getting around 52c a litre. We always knew we were getting shafted, we don’t need to know how long the shaft is.”

Industry

Fund for manufacturers - $100m fund for manufacturers to utilise to diversify their businesses following the collapse of the car manufacturing industry. The Industry Minister has indicated that a large portion of the Fund would be directed at businesses in South Australia and Victoria.

”What an exercise in farcical hypocrisy, they have completely destroyed the biggest manufacturing industry in the country and put 100,000 Australians out of work and have sent nearly $17B a year overseas, that was once going into the pockets of Australians. They have come out with this piece of hypocrisy. Look at the horses bolting while you are shutting the gate.”