Media Release

Federal Member for Kennedy and KAP Leader Bob Katter questioned whether today’s comments by the Prime Minister meant that we should abandon all isolated communities in rural Australia?

“Quite frankly the same argument applies to the white fellas as to the black fellas,” Mr Katter said.

“Are we going to stop all services to the bush?

“The simple fact of the matter is that if you shave off a 150km wide belt from Cairns to Adelaide and take out a little dot around Perth and Darwin, there are less than one million people living in an area greater than Europe.

“Except for an extremely narrow coastal belt as we have failed totally to occupy the land mass of Australia.

“In that remainder of Australia lies three quarters of the nation’s water and eighty percent of its arable land - and about a third of the people living there are First Australians.

“The great initiatives of the past, Charles Court and Bjelke-Petersen’s ban on fly in mining, the building of dams and great irrigation schemes, have all stopped.”

“And now the Government is saying you shouldn’t live there?

“So we abandon the Julia Creeks, we abandon the cattle industry?”

Mr Katter said that again and again he had called for freehold title deeds to be issued to First Australians to enable economic development in remote areas.

“I have raged over diabetes which is in epidemic proportions in First Australian communities, where they are dying in their droves of malnutrition.

“The solution to the problem is to provide title deeds so that they can obtain finance to buy cattle. There might be some financial assistance needed on top but it would be an absolute pittance.

“If you think this can’t be done, I’ll take you up to Delta Downs where Fred Pascoe and his brother cousins can take you over their station property, which is one of the five biggest station properties in Australia in terms of cattle numbers.

“We can fix this issue, just give us the tools,” Mr Katter said.