Media Release

KAP Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter will again move, during the next sittings of Parliament, for an urgent moratorium on coal seam gas drilling in aquifers following concerns about a Canadian ‘fracking’ operation in proximity to inland Australia’s only reliable source of freshwater, the Great Artesian basin.

Mr Katter, whose amendment for a one-year moratorium was voted down by both major parties in Parliament in May, has backed new calls for a moratorium by NT cattlemen in the wake of the NT Government’s approval of what is Australia’s first fracking of a horizontal well, located in the Georgina basin.

“We strongly back the call for a moratorium by the Northern Territory Cattlemen's Association and will move for an urgent moratorium in the next sittings of Parliament – and we expect the support of the crossbenchers,” said Mr Katter.

“And we want every landholder to ask their local federal politicians why they did not vote for a moratorium in May.

“Is it more important to make foreign corporations rich than to protect the future of our landholders and contamination of our water?

“There’s no money in it for Australia but I suspect there’s lots of money in it for the ALP-LNP corporations.”