Media Release

Dear Editor,

The people deserve bipartisan leadership in our local governments – the last thing we want is party politics – so it is disappointing that the only mayor in the entire Kennedy electorate to be actively advocating for a political side this Federal Election is the Cloncurry Mayor. The LNP candidate and her running mate, the Mayor of Cloncurry (who wants section 457 visa workers to come in and take our jobs), say we’ve achieved little.

This is far from the truth. Some great achievements in the 43rd Parliament across the electorate, from the coast to the border to the Gulf, include:

• around $1,000m in the past three years for our coastal national highways;
• about $300m for Cloncurry-Camooweal in the previous six years (by comparison, my LNP counterpart in Leichhardt secured around $70m or $80m over 12 years);
• $950m for post-cyclone Yasi recovery (the largest disaster allocation in Australian history);
• $5.5m for the Mission Beach safe all-weather access;
• $1m for the Kirrama Range Road;
• over $60m (2010-2013) for councils in Kennedy under the Roads to Recovery program;
• we’ve been advised there’s $11m available for completion of the Hann Highway;
• $8.2m for the Cloncurry truck bypass;
• $2.4m to complete the Cloncurry Community Precinct;
• $11m for Mt Isa housing for our visiting doctors and nurses;
• $17m for Mt Isa’s Laura Johnson nursing home;
• $2.7m for Mt Isa’s RFDS upgrades;
• $5m for Julia Creek senior’s housing (as well as $577,000 to build locum doctor accommodation);
• $4.4m for the Hughenden Aged Care facility;
• $10m for irrigation development in the Mid-West, centred mostly on Richmond;
• $420m for concessional loans and $99m for welfare payments for struggling farmers (a wonderful adjunct for the Gulf country though far from solving our problems);
• $320m retained for the CopperString transmission line to Mount Isa (so if CopperString is not being built, then take it up with the Queensland LNP Government, who are preaching gas to us, increasing costs by 400%); and
• $2.5m for a commercial report on generating renewable power at Pentland, west of Townsville.

We have also fostered a relationship with the Indonesian Ambassador and Indonesia’s Trade and Agricultural Ministers to resurrect the live cattle export market. This has resulted in securing a 30% increase in this market in the past few months – countering the devastating effects of the ALP/Green Government’s live export ban.

The Qld LNP promised us with Royalties to Regions the return of these benefits to the regions from which they came – yet our mining regions haven’t received a cent. The Qld LNP has not given virtually a single dollar to our cattle industry – concessional loans and survival grants could have easily been given. Indeed, the precedent for such measures was established when I was a Qld Minister, delivering in terms of today’s money some $250m in concessional loans as well as some $85m in survival grants.

These decisions have deprived the citizens of Cloncurry and surrounds much-needed funds – maybe the local mayor could take this up with his mates when he hosts the next LNP dinner.

I stand on my record that, in probably my entire political history, I have never seen such a significant investment into our electorate as in the past three years – and this has been achieved despite that fact that I didn’t back, nor did I form part of, the minority ALP/Greens Government.

To our great disadvantage the first and only Greens MP, who had significant power in this minority government, was put there by Liberal preferences – let’s hope for all of our sakes they’ve learnt their lesson.

Sincerely,
Hon Bob Katter MP
Federal Member for Kennedy