Media Release

Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter today announced he would move for government fleet vehicles to be mandatorily Australian-made when Parliament resumes, following the loss of another 1200 motor vehicle manufacturing jobs.

“These job losses are on top of another 1000 axed at SPC Ardmona and Holden in the past couple of weeks; and if you add the flow-on jobs, you’re probably looking at some 5000 jobs gone in manufacturing and processing in the past few weeks alone,” warned Mr Katter.

“Well, we’ll move that all motor vehicles purchased by State and Federal governments will be Australian-made with predominantly Australian steel – and if the states refuse then they lose concomitant federal funding.

Mr Katter said this would force politicians to choose on behalf of the Australian people whether or not to guarantee the future of the key Australian industries, which have been decimated by an artificially-inflated Australian dollar.

“As we have been warning continuously and continually: unless the dollar comes down, this trend going to continue at increased pace, until we no longer have a steel industry, a car manufacturing industry, a food processing industry... and we will live in a country that can’t produce a tyre, can’t produce an electric motor, and soon won’t be able to produce a motor car,” said Mr Katter.

“Add all this up and we do not live in a technologically advanced country any more – it’s technologically backward.

“But we are putting up a solution – and we are not ashamed to talk about tariffs, subsidies or any of those things because all we have ever asked for was for the dollar to come down.

“We don’t apologise for saying that there’s no magic pudding; that Australians have got to pay a bit more so we have jobs and decent pay and conditions in this country.

“And all these Australians losing their jobs can thank their respective ALP-LNP governments, because it’s their free market policies – which they skite about – that have smashed our industries to pieces.

“Everyone except the politicians in the major parties knows that ‘free market’ simply means the big foreign corporations are free to mark products up to whatever price they feel like, in a country run by foreign monopolies who bring in all their cheap goods from overseas, as our own industries collapse .

“So whether our politicians like it or whether they don’t, and whether we get thrown out of Parliament or not, they will be forced to vote on all cars under government contract being Australian-made.

“Surely we’ve got the right to put these solutions to the Australian people?

“Yes it might cost us a little more to make things in Australia. But it has always been the Australian way that we look after our mates; and we want technology and manufacturing in this country.

“That has been the way it has been in this country for a 120 years. But it’s the people driven by selfish, suited, slithering interests who are selling their country off to foreigners and want everything to be privatised.”