Media Release

KAP Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has written to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence calling on them to urgently allow graziers affected by drought access to the Townsville Field Training Area which spans 200,000 hectares of unharvested land.

The move follows similar lobbying by State Member for Dalrymple Shane Knuth to allow desperate farmers access to the grassed area to feed their starving cattle. Mr Katter has met with Federal Ministers several times over the past year over the issue.

“It is now over a year since we started our correspondence trying to get the Government to do the right thing without forcing them to do the right thing,” Mr Katter said.

“In my representations on this issue, all of the military personnel I spoke to were positive towards the graziers’ proposal.

“It is only the administrative wing who were resistant – those same administrative personnel who don’t have to face up to public opinion or expose their Government to the violent and fully justified criticisms that are now coming.

“We have had 3 straight years of drought.

“Neighbouring cattlemen have made their stations available to the army for manoeuvres continuously over the years, they have never asked anything in return or any compensation for their airstrips and roads being used.

“As an instructor in the militia through the war years in Indonesia and Vietnam, you endeavour at all times to carry out manoeuvres in real time situations and there is very little land anywhere in Australia where there are not cattle.

“There is not a person that is not now considering the Federal Government to be dog in the mangers and people that are totally insensitive to the plight of the suffering of many North Queenslanders.

“We would point out to the Government that if the political wing was to intervene here, they would be heroes not only to North Queensland, but also to the soldiers who have been wrongfully held responsible for this decision,” Mr Katter said.