Media Release

Please find a number of comments from Mr Katter below in response to the announcement today that up to 750 workers are due to have their jobs axed.

“Our thoughts go out to the workers that have lost their jobs.

“Subsidies are a stop gap measure. The purchase of Australian made vehicles must be immediately mandated for all federal, state and local governments.

“Throughout this campaign we have said that in nine years, on present trends, there will be no motor vehicles manufactured in this country. Australian-made motor vehicle sales has in the past quarter-century diminished from 73 per cent in 1987 to 12 per cent two years ago.

“Right now, we are looking down the barrel of no steel manufacturing, no motor vehicle production, no tyre production, no oil, no electricity production. The steel industry has already shed tens of thousands of jobs and the refineries are doomed.

“We will be a Third World country industrially and technologically.

“This country will become a net importer of food - we already are on fruit and vegetables, pork and seafood, and Heaven only knows what else.

“There has not been a single policy statement to address the most basic problems of this country by either major party. This current ignorance will mean no jobs, no technology. no food. no petrol.

“As for jobs, the ALP Government brought in nearly 200,000 migrants, allowed an estimated 80,000 illegals and 125,000 section 457 Visa holders in to take our jobs off us. I mean, how many damn jobs are left for Australians when the ALP brings in 125,000 foreigners to undermine our pay and conditions?

“White collar jobs are flowing out to foreign fly-ins like the seas at low tide.

“Retailing has been hit since the Government executed GST, while no GST is charged on products being purchased from overseas.

“We are a country that subsidises imports and it sure is picnic time for the oil and gas people as well as for the supermarket giants.

“But this election we pray that Santa Claus will blow the ALP/LNP corporation into a dark page of Australian history – the place where they belong.”