Media Release

Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter today questioned the new Prime Minister over the Australian economy in Question Time, asking him to commit to key projects that would rescue Australian industries.

Prime Minister. People clearly have faith in you to make it happen. Can you justify that faith by:

- Building with Qld the rail line into the Galilee;
- Mandating ethanol and biodiesel (rescuing grains, sugar and cattle);

- Decree that all Government cars be Australian made and our naval ships built in Cairns and Adelaide; and

- Institute a reserve resource policy, rescuing steel, fertiliser and aluminium.

“It is these four issues that are so compellingly obvious and unremarkable,” Mr Katter later said.

“If you open up the Galilee Basin, there are 17,000 permanent jobs at Adani, Mac Mining and Resolve. I’m confident that all three will go ahead the minute the railway line is announced. But I have no confidence in a single mining company building the rail line themselves.

“Ethanol and bio-diesel will pump $3,000 million into the grain and sugar areas. It will also provide high quality cheap cattle feed, a bi-product of production, which is vital for the cattle industry.

“To retain the motor vehicle industry, even one manufacturing plant is worth well over $5,000 million a year.

“The pacific patrol boats, the submarines and frigate destroyers over 10 years is worth nearly $100 million to the Australian economy. It would be a magnificent creation of a whole new industry for Far North Queensland.

“Steel, fertiliser and aluminium industries have made it perfectly clear that they cannot survive in Australia without a reserve resource policy. We need to keep one or two percent of our gas and give it at cost price to our economically strategic industries, for the benefit of the Australian people.

“The loss of these industries would otherwise throw another 40,000 or 50,000 people out of work. That is into an economy that has lost or is in the process of losing 200,000 jobs from coal, motor vehicle, hard rock mining and the completion of development of CSG and iron ore.

“Self-sufficiency in fuel, steel, aluminium and fertiliser should be obvious to even the most lame brain.

“How the Prime Minister decides these issues will determine whether the motor car that is our economy continues to head for the cliff, or whether Ayrton Senna has taken the wheel,” Mr Katter said.