Media Release

KAP Federal Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter is fuming at Senior Government Ministers who refuse to give up on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a Free Trade deal that’s dead in the water after US President Trump repeatedly said he’d kill it off and again indicated so in his inauguration speech.

Mr Katter will be voting against the ratification of TPP if the Government upholds its promise to bring the doomed trade policy before Parliament.

Mr Katter said, “The TPP would be the destruction of our sovereignty in Australia.

“The likes of Ciobo and Joyce, it’s likely they want to prove they’re dumb… like the Bourbon Kings of France -- they’ve forgotten nothing and learnt nothing.
“Europe does not do Free Trade, Japan does not do Free Trade, China does not do Free Trade, India does not do Free Trade, Brazil does not do Free Trade… who the bloody hell on earth does Free Trade???” asks Mr Katter.
Mr Katter pointed out the lack of Free Trade from the United States,
“And America doesn’t do it in shipping (with the Jones Act 1920),
“America doesn’t do it in pharmaceuticals,
“America doesn’t do it with military technology,
“America doesn’t do it with aluminium or steel…
“The U.S has repeatedly had interventionist policies…. For example, America effectively does not let a kilo of sugar into the country. There are, and always will be restrictions on cattle.
“It has laws ensuring there will be only so much access into the petrol and oil industry.
“Its agriculture support levels (subsidies / embargoes / custom duties) is over 33 % (Australia’s is under 5%).
“In the early ‘90s when the Government applied globalisation policies to wool, wool was the biggest export item in Australia… in today’s money, $12 thousand million a year. It is now around $2 thousand million.
“The economists say there are 10 jobs per million dollars, so 100 000 wool industry jobs vanished from inland Australia -- congratulations to your marketisim.
“Industries like prawns vanished almost completely. We pleaded for the Government not to let prawns in, White Spot and IHHNV would come we said…
“The marketisim ideologues in the ALP/LNP destroyed these industries and as well as diseased our Great Barrier Reef with IHHNV and poisoned our prawn stocks with White Spot.
“Thanks to marketisim I can think of countless examples… White goods have closed, textile, footwear & clothing, the motor vehicle industry -- gone, oil industry worth $25 billion a year -- all gone. We import all of our oil from overseas, what criminal insanity!
“Yet blockheads like Joyce and Ciobo will blunder on bereft of any intellectual, imaginative, innovative solution for Australia.
“Instead, they will continue on with a policy that has relegated us to an iron ore and coal quarry.
“Marketisim also gave away our natural gas industry to complete foreign ownership -- $23 billion a year projected to go overseas. Unlike coal and iron, natural gas has no labour component, so all the $23 billion a year profits go overseas.
“$23 billion a year would give every retiree almost $9 thousand a year, every struggling mum with three kids, $15 thousand a year… and it’s just given away under the policies of marketisim. The world suffered under communism, fascism, imperialism – marketisim is just as bad.”
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