Media Release

Katter’s Australian Party Federal Leader Bob Katter has today introduced laws into Federal Parliament that “unashamedly protect our agricultural and food security” by stopping the overseas sell-off of Australia’s agricultural industries and land.

The KAP’s Australian Ownership Bill 2013 “also recognises that in limited circumstances, foreign investment is necessary to provide our farmers and producers with the only exit possible from many years of unfair prices; or provides substantial benefits – and I emphasise substantial benefit – to the nation via for instance the opening of new markets, by providing for financial betterment of all Australians, or by providing for either or both technological advancement and major capital investment”.

“In saying these things, it amazes me that there doesn’t seem to be in this Parliament the slightest scintilla of nationalism,” the Federal Member for Kennedy told the House of Representatives today.

“There is no thought that should we ask ourselves: do we want our country to be owned by foreigners so that Australians become some sort of serf working for the foreign landlord?

“And with the Liberal Party looking very likely to become the Government of Australia in a deregulated labour market, then we would be serfs working for foreign landlords for increasingly less money, as our pay and conditions are undermined back to where they were a hundred years ago.”

Meanwhile, with Australia’s inexorable march towards becoming a net importer of food, soon we would be unable to feed ourselves, Mr Katter warned in the Parliament.

“But I have heard time after time, in this (Parliament), people get up and seriously talk about how we’re going to be ‘the food bowl of Asia’. For Heaven’s sake, will you realise that you’ll be the begging bowl of Asia, not the food bowl of Asia! You’ll be living in a country that will not be able to feed itself within three-to-nine years’ time (and) the morality of continuing down this pathway is, to me, extremely dubious.”

Mr Katter concluded by reminding the Parliament of the importance of Australia developing its remote agricultural areas, in referring to sentiments expressed by former Australian political luminaries, deputy prime minister Red Ted Theodore and prime minister ‘Black Jack’ McEwen.

“Both those men said again and again that, unless we develop this country I fear that we will not be able to hold on to it. And if ever there is a truism of history, it is that a land without people shall be populated by a people without land,” said Mr Katter.

Mr Katter’s Australian Ownership Bill 2013 complements the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Amendment (Cubbie Station) Bill he introduced to the Parliament in November 2012 to reverse the sale of Australia’s largest land holding and water licence to foreign owners.