Media Release

KAP Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter today introduced legislation into the Australian Parliament to stop the sale of Australia’s largest land holding and water licence to foreign owners.

The Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Amendment (Cubbie Station) Bill 2012 directs the Treasurer to make an order prohibiting a controlling share of Cubbie being sold to foreign persons, or if already sold, to make an order for that share to be disposed of to persons approved by the Treasurer.

In speaking on his Private Members Bill, Mr Katter told the House of Representatives that while the Australian Parliament was destroying Murray-Darling communities outside of Qld with water cutbacks, it had “kept all the water intact at Cubbie station and handed it all over to a foreign corporation” – despite the existence of other bidders in Australia.

“Our biggest water licence hasn’t been bought by the government for environmental flows – it’s been sold to foreigners,” he said.

“What the Government should have done was to break Cubbie station up into 10 or 12 civilised sizes, where there would be owner-operators… but instead of doing that they sold it as one big heap to a foreign corporation.”

Mr Katter told Parliament that just like the Cubbie, the recent overseas sale of Ord irrigation land in WA’s north – which was subsidised by almost $600m of taxpayer money – confirmed again that the ALP-LNP ‘corporations’ running this country were intent on selling out the Australian people, who paid for the Ord infrastructure to be built to facilitate the overseas sale.

“The government won’t subsidise Australian farmers, won’t give us a cent in any respect – not the Liberal party, not the Labor party.

“They won’t give Australian farmers a single cent and yet will deliver to a foreign corporation a $600m subsidy.

“Do they want us to be a nation of serfs working for foreign landlords?”

Meanwhile, Mr Katter is set to join other parliamentarians in addressing media at Parliament House this Wednesday regarding a petition, to be tabled in Parliament, in which some 50,000 people demand a halt to the overseas sell-off of Australia’s land and wealth-creating assets.