Media Release

Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter today walked out of Question Time in disgust following the response by the Minister for Northern Australia, a Melbourner, on the sale of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese Corporation.

The Northern Territory Chief Minister announced the sale of the Port of Darwin last week, which involves a 99 year lease being granted to Chinese owned Landbridge Group.

Mr Katter today asked the Minister for Northern Australia:

Ports, roads, rail, airports were built by the people, as joint-user service facilities, to create development.

Is the Government facilitating the Darwin Port sale, thereby:-

1. Profoundly inhibiting growth, on half Australia’s coastline; and

2. Since the China FTA / TPP allows discretionary port charges and foreign jobs outsourcing, creating a foreign corporate unrestrained monopolistic money machine?

After walking out of Question Time in disgust, Mr Katter said that the Minister’s reply was the usual lecture on ‘Paul Keating Liberal Party Market Fundamentalism’.

“It showed not the slightest interest in every person who is striving to create export markets in Northern Australia,” Mr Katter said.

“If there is one choke on northern development, it is that all products north of the trading ports of Townsville and Port Hedland have to go through Darwin.

“But who would develop any project knowing that it has to go through a turnpike called the Port of Darwin?

“It’s not a port - it’s a money collector for a Chinese corporation.

“There are massive phosphate, iron ore and copper reserves in Northern Australia, but who’s going to develop them in the knowledge they can be skinned alive with port charges?

“And what is the point in the Government putting $700 million into a railway line that goes direct to a foreign owned monopolistic port?

“Every single development will now pay a toll – a discretionary toll of whatever level the Chinese owner feels like setting.

“You’d have to be mad to build a business that would export product anywhere in Northern Australia under those conditions,” Mr Katter said.

Mr Katter also decried the Government’s behavior today, which saw several Ministers erupt in laughter at his decision to leave the Chamber.

“The Minister from Melbourne for Northern Australia thinks it’s funny,” Mr Katter said.

“Well I guess it might be as he probably needs a road map to find his way to Darwin.

“But the 330,000 Australians who have gone to our Facebook page on this issue don’t think it’s very funny.

“There’s an election in 12 months’ time, and they’ve all got a vote,” Mr Katter said.