Media Release

15 November 2016:KAP Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, the lone voice in the Parliament fighting against section 457 visas, has today praised the CFMEU for being the lone voice outside the Parliament fighting this issue. This praise comes as the ALP belatedly announce they will tackle the 457 visa issue.

“The reason that we have been so close to the CFMEU is over the burning issue of the section 457 workers.

“There are 200,000 a year coming into Australia. It was not the Liberals who brought them in - it was Labour.

“We have fought tenaciously for 3 years and taken a lot of criticism to be associated with the CFMEU. But they are the only voice, outside of the KAP, that has been raised in this country tenaciously opposing the section 457 workers. We have said repeatedly over and over again, ‘They are taking our jobs and undermining our pay and conditions’.

“Who will you take as a worker, the bloke overseas used to working for $5 a day and 60 hour week and has a deportation order at your discretion?; or would you take an Australian who you have to pay a fair days pay for a fair days work?

“So whilst I congratulate my own party the KAP, I also congratulate the CFMEU the only body that has fought the good fight.

“We thank the ALP for, however belatedly, having realised the necessity for putting a tiger that they released back in the cage.

“Our farmers that have been on their knees, their daughters and sons who desperately needed those second income jobs in the mines, which have not only been vanishing but also have been given to the supercheap labour from overseas.

“We hope that people like One Nation will support our stand on the CFMEU. The CFMEU are the people that have got the breakthrough, let there be no doubt, they have been the only body out there fighting against 457 visas, outside of KAP.

“We hope that people like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party will change their positon in voting for the destruction of the CFMEU (by supporting the ABCC legislation) and realise the value of these bodies that fight for the Australian way.”

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