Media Release

As KAP Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter tonight joined his guests the Indonesian Ambassador and John Honan of ethanol producing Manildra Corporation at the Houses of Parliament for budget night, he remarked on what might be a promising budget for Northern Australia, but for an election year next year.

“A budget should create the Australian economy, it should create new industries,” Mr Katter said.

“A budget should make the cake bigger and not just concentrate on how the cake should be cut up.

“There are very serious opportunities in this budget with the announcement of a $5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility that will be available for major infrastructure projects like ports, railways, pipelines and electricity generation.

“This will provide real possibilities for the Hughenden Water Development Project, the Reverse Tully Mill-Stream near Ravenshoe, the Upper Mitchell River near Mareeba and the Upper Burdekin Irrigation scheme (UBurIS).

“But the Government has only committed to $1 million in funding in this financial year and I’m mindful that next year is an election year.”

Mr Katter said that he would be pleased if this year’s budget resulted in Government guarantees on loans for tax generating projects, but was quick to point out that city overpasses and tunnels were not tax generating projects.

“The building of the rail lines and ports in Queensland created the rail industry,” Mr Katter said.

“The building of the sugar mills with Government loans created the sugar industry.

“The Mount Isa rail line and Lake Julius Dam created the fourth biggest mine in human history.

“In the words of Robbie Katter, what do you get for $5,000 million on a tunnel – a few thousand people get to get home a few minutes earlier to watch tv.”

SPECIFIC RESPONSES TO THE 2015/2016 BUDGET

Drought assistance, concessional loans and money for beef roads

“The concessional loans moneys must be worn out from being announced so many times,” Mr Katter said.

“Improving roads to develop the cattle industry might have a short term benefit, but very shortly there aren’t going to be any cattle to put on the roads. And I have to question whether this is money that would have been allocated for roads anyway, just being re-dressed.

“A combination of drought and the refusal of Government to give money via a Reconstruction Board means that cattle numbers are dropping dramatically.

“The Government keeps coming out with Propaganda Placebos – all of these little handouts to the cattle industry are just that, Propaganda Placebos – none of them are going to save the base industry.

“The things that we desperately need, like an ethanol industry to give us distiller’s grain for feed, interest rates in line with the rest of the world and to bring the dollar down to where it should be at 40 cents are sadly lacking.

“Preaching to us about free market and competition where as a result of Government policy two supermarkets have 90 percent of the market and cattle farmers have only two companies to sell beef to, that’s the hypocrisy of the Propaganda Placebos.

“The current Government has a habit of giving with one hand and taking away with the other, Financial Assistance Grants (FAG) for local councils being a prime example, where in the one budget they stopped the indexation and now they want credit for giving money back to the Councils as drought relief assistance.

“That’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul, that’s robbing Peter to pay Peter,” Mr Katter said.

Falling Revenue

The Treasurer has cited falling iron ore prices as having ‘blown a hole in the budget’ and reportedly said that the Treasury had contemplated an iron ore price of $35 per tonne in its estimates.

Mr Katter said that every one of the operations in WA was however based upon revenue of $90 per tonne.

“The Treasurer would be better spent pulling his competition dogs off Andrew Forrest for the very sensible proposal that we produce the amount of iron ore that the world needs rather than producing twice that amount.

“The elasticity of demand in the iron ore industry works much the same as the elasticity in the drawers in another type of ‘ore.”

Remote Indigenous Housing Strategy

Mr Katter welcomed the initiative, but said that the projects must employ local First Australians.

Health Cuts

The Health Minister has reportedly been tasked with cutting $3 billion over the next five years from the money the Government pays drug companies for medicines and what it pays chemists to dispense them.

Mr Katter said today that the cost of pharmaceuticals inordinately falls upon mothers with kids as well as older people, who are least able to afford to pay for them.

Families Package

Under the budget parents receiving an employer-funded Paid Parental Leave scheme will no longer be able to access the minimum wage taxpayer funded scheme.

“Of all the people in society that they choose to bear the deficit burden, they choose mothers,” Mr Katter said.

“The thing above all else that Australia needs is mothers, as contrary to popular belief we have a diminishing population where deaths exceed births.

“If you’re putting a further cost burden on mothers, I don’t know how people can afford to have babies.”

Pensions

Addressing the proposed cuts to the pension for those that the Prime Minister has described as ‘liquid assets millionaires’, Mr Katter said that it was simply ‘appalling’.

“They could have taxed share transactions, they could have taxed speculation in the Australian dollar, they could have taxed the people earning over $5 million a year.

“Why don’t they take it off the people that are paying themselves $8 million a year - the heads of the banks and giant corporations in Australia.

“Withdrawing benefits to retirees is simply appalling.

“They are the last part of society that I would be withdrawing benefits from, after young families of course.

“What’s $800,000 in assets, it’s two houses outside of the family home, or if you’re in a capital city, it’s one house,” Mr Katter said.

Multinational’s Taxes

“There’s nothing in the budget to tax the giant corporations, who in the Government’s own Inquiry admitted they were paying virtually no tax,” Mr Katter said.

"There’s nothing in the budget to tax the investors in the stock market who are basically speculators on a giant roulette wheel.

“And there’s nothing in the budget to tax those playing games in their trade of the Australian dollar, upon which a tax was advocated by no lesser person than Yale Professor and Nobel Laureate James Tobin.

“Instead of taxing the rich corporate profligate speculators, it’s taxing the people least able to pay.

“And there will be a political price to pay.”

ITEMS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE 2015/2016 BUDGET

Hann Highway

Whilst Government has verbally committed to the project, there was no line item in the budget for the Hann Highway.

“The Hann Highway, is the fundamental infrastructure project in the economy,” Mr Katter said.

“It would provide an inland route linking Cairns to Melbourne, saving approximately 700km off the trip.

“It would allow road trains to travel the entire distance without needing to unhook their trailers - drastically reducing maintenance, fuel and fatigue management.

“It would be the alternative inland route to the Bruce Highway when it floods.

“Almost all of Australia’s banana industry is in Far North Qld, as well as much of its avocado, mango and almond production, in fact around 5 percent of Australia’s entire fruit and vegetable comes from Far North Queensland.

“The Hann Highway would be of enormous benefit to both the industries in FNQ as well as those in Melbourne and Adelaide area, providing a fundamental link between them.”

Australian Reconstruction and Development Board

“Imagine a budget that provided two percent interest loans to struggling farmers and graziers as well as contractors and businesses that rely on the agricultural industry for survival.

“And the beauty of it is that it requires no actual budgetary allocation, just a remote risk for the Government.

“It shrinks the bank repayments for an average million dollar debt from $150,000 in interest and repayments to probably $25,000 per year, once the Government takes over the debt at a reduced rate and loans it back to the farmer at the Government interest rate of 2 percent.

“So the farmer’s commitments shrink, which means that almost all will pull through.

“That has been the experience with every single reconstruction board initiative in the last 100 years and I speak with authority as I was the Minister with primary responsibly when we did it for the sugar industry in Queensland.”

Ethanol Mandate

Mr Katter said that in 2002 Australia was importing virtually no petrol, approximately $1,000 million worth per year. Today, approximately $25,000 million is sent to the Middle East to buy oil.

“Sending $25,000 million a year to the Middle East to buy oil, instead of sending it into rural Australia, is brainless stupidity.

“Economists say there are 10 jobs for every million dollars generated - that’s 250,000 jobs that could be pumped into non-metropolitan Australia which is reeling under collapsing and disintegrating economies.

“There needs to be a mandate for ethanol – the bowsers are owned and controlled by the oil companies – and they’re not going to willingly stand aside and share their profits with Australian farmers and Australian workers.”

Other projects

Mr Katter said that two standout examples of projects that only required a Government Guarantee were the rail line into the Galilee coal fields and the Upper Burdekin dam scheme, both of which would provide massive tax revenue to the Government.

“The railine into the Galilee coalfields in Queensland needs to be owned by Government.

“Even a moderate 30 million tonne a year in extraction would equate to nearly $1,000 million in tax revenue for the Federal Government and create 20,000 jobs.

“If they proceed with the Upper Burdekin Irrigation Scheme (UBurIS), that would see the creation of 2,500 jobs and $300 million a year in tax revenue.

“Similarly, with dams – the Reverse Tully Mill Stream and the Upper Mitchell River on the Atherton Tablelands – would create another 2,000 jobs and another $300 million a year in tax revenue.”

Mr Katter said that a simple edict that all government cars should be Australian made would rescue the Australian car industry.

“There are 55,000 people going onto Welfare in Melbourne and Adelaide instead of those jobs creating $600 million in tax. On top of that the government will have to find $1.5 million in welfare payments.”

Financial Assistance Grants (FAG) funding Mr Katter said that further Financial Assistance Grants (FAG) funding for local Councils was desperately needed after the Government froze FAG funding for local Councils in last year’s budget so that it no longer increases in line with inflation, a move which deprives rural and regional Councils of a much needed source of income.

“FAG funding has always favoured regional and rural councils and was given to overcome the lopsided funding effect where the city and the majority take all and the North West and rural councils get virtually nothing.

“The freezing of FAG funding adds further pressure for remote councils that are already overwhelmed with the State Government adding additional responsibilities without providing extra financial assistance.”

Immigration levels

Mr Katter said that above all one of the most important issues was the continuous bringing to Australia of 600,000 foreign workers a year with migration, education and section 457 visas.

“The economy only generates 200,000 jobs and there are over 200,000 job seekers a year including school leavers,” Mr Katter said.

“So we have a total of 800,000 people seeking work in an economy that only generates 200,000 jobs a year.

“Clearly, 600,000 more welfare recipients are created each year, migrant workers don’t go onto welfare but they take Australian jobs and it’s we poor Australians that end up on welfare.

“If the average welfare is over $20,000 per year (with free health system, free education and ever escalating rent subsidies) that is $12,000 million a year the tax payers of Australia have to find.

“That is $12,000 million the Government is charging the Australian taxpayers to impress the United Nations or to placate some voters in Western Sydney.

“Yet there is not a single intelligent person in this country who understands that the section 457 visa workers coming into the country are undermining our pay and conditions.

“Some of the unions have been heroes on this issue but others have cut a deal and sold out their workers.

“I might have an entirely different attitude if our economy was generating half a million jobs a year, but it ain’t.

“If Mr Hockey wants to balance his budget, then I’d tell him to stop bringing in 600,000 immigrants each year.”