Media Release

IN the "biggest sell-out since Judas Iscariot took his 30 pieces of silver", the Federal Government's first enterprise migration agreement to parachute in foreign mine workers will be "the final nail in the coffin for the Labor Party", said Katter’s Australian Party Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter.

Mr Katter, who learned of the announcement today while at a picket line of mining workers striking at Moranbah in Queensland's Bowen Basin, said the deal would be the "eternal shame" of a party formed a century ago on the basis of stopping foreign workers undermining Aussie workers' pay.

"It is beyond comprehension that 100 years later, they will be remembered as the party that introduced foreign fly-in workers – not the Liberal-National Party," he said.

"This will be the issue that will destroy the Government. And if Labor is doing it, God help us when the Libs get in."

Mr Katter warned that the Government's deal with the world's richest woman to parachute in the unskilled foreign workers was "the tip of an iceberg moving rapidly to sink Australia".

"Overseas interests own our resources – so the profits go overseas, the wages go overseas, and the Australian people are left with a hole in the ground."

Mr Katter dismissed as spurious claims that unskilled foreign labour was necessary to meet demand during a mining boom.

"Charles Court and Joe Bjelke-Petersen presided over the biggest period of growth in Australian history, and they banned interstate fly-in workers, let alone overseas fly-ins.

"Each time this happens, it becomes more acceptable.

"But we are here today at the picket line to state our full support of the unions and throw behind them the formidable resources of Katter's Australian Party in fighting this.

"Most Australians do not believe our country should be run by foreign interests who are determined to enforce a master-slave situation and undermine our workers' wages.

"And it will be to the eternal shame of those in the Labor Party that it is they who are allowing it.

"No member of that party can call themselves Labor after today."