Rob Katter – New boundaries, fuel (16 March)

0:00Monday morning, Robbie Carter joins us this morning on Rural Queensland today, Rob good morning and thanks so much for being with us. The complete debacle about the redistribution of the electoral role and where the boundaries are has rattled a lot of people and no doubt you'd be mightily pissed off this on this Monday morning. I haven't spoken to you about just how frustrating this is but I think a lot of people are doing all they can to try and destroy these minor parties which is very worrying and that is not how the democratic society should work. I'm not going to make it, you know, I'm trying not to make it about the KAP and myself, Shane Canoe and I guess major parties do what they do and Labour did exactly the same thing to be fair but I would make them Paris and when Lawrence Springwell was the leader he anticipated that they would try and remove seats from regional Queensland and add them to Brisbane because that's where the population growth is and if they just, which they shouldn't

1:04it shouldn't just be a linear trend, actually if there's more people they need more seats because if you follow that through with logical conclusions of those, if my eyes are just kept depopulating this sort of area out here then you have no one represented just be tucked in with the towns will seat and surely at some point you'd say will resources need representation just as well as people, you know, you need someone stand up for a resource rich area just for example I'm using them either but you can say that for a lot of regional Queensland but Lawrence Springwell getting back to the point he acknowledged that and said he came to us, he came to the KAP and said let's go for expand, we used the hung parliament and gave them our vote to expand the size of parliament so didn't have to abolish regional seats, they've done exactly the opposite this time which is very, very disappointing and so it's in North Queensland we'll lose a seat and brush, you know, you just can't afford in regional Queensland to lose anything at the moment, a very, very disappointing month and yeah we're going to work out and now personally for me, for this week there

2:09ain't anyone I'm going to take in Gimbala and Millamilla Melanda which is just no sane person would look at that and say hey that's a good idea, let's throw a 15-hour drive into whoever represents Lothaleck, actually 17 hours from one end to the other now, so constituent now and Millamilla Melanda goes from a 15-minute drive to see the state MP do a 15-hour drive and if that on anyone is pure insanity and rinks of fun and you know, so not good, mate. Can I ask you about, I mean David Christopher Lee is Bushy, so what does he say about this? Well, if I'm going to be kind, I'll say, you know, the party's pressured, pressured him into, you know, a position where they've got to be aggressive and I'm standing by their seats and and that's about as fine as I'll be because there's no other way to sort of talk about it. Yeah, right, it's just just poor form mate and yeah, you know, we should be trying to win elections on policy and stand up for people, not tricks and, you know, I know, again,

3:15Labour are just as bad if not worse than this stuff, although I'm not just picking on the LNP, but whoever it is, you know, people deserve better than this and certainly and they should expect more from their politicians and modern government. Yeah, it's a very, very fair statement. Okay, let's talk a little bit more, this fuel fiasco, can you believe what we are dealing with now? I mean, Chris Bowen has zero idea about what is going on and we're now in a situation where fuel is just through the roof. Agriculture sector is the most important thing that we know and mining sector. People are not going to be, you want to talk about trying to create wealth. Chris Bowen's like, oh, it's two weeks away, you know, mate, two weeks, two weeks, you're goose. He doesn't understand a thing that's going on. Yeah, I mean, he just keeps lowering the bar for incompetency and modern politics, Chris Bowen. It's just phenomenal what he thinks he can get away with telling the people and, yeah, mate, like the response for someone and not the

4:21other lanterns all the time. I mean, we're honestly of my speeches on fuel security and same power alone and it's really more national issue by 20 times I've spoken about in the Queensland State Parliament and he knows that's probably similar, 40 media releases over the last 15 years of being politics. We've been warning about this, not only warning but offering solutions because I heard, you know, I've heard some other minor parties down around town, oh, yeah, we're warning about, well, that's fine, but what was your solution? Because we had one double, not. And, you know, one of them was trying to protect some of the refineries and more protectionism type economics, the employees, but it's ethanol. You know, he can 53 other countries in the world mandate it and it doesn't fill all the gaps that it'll be 10% of your supplies and if you can weather some of the storms effect and that's why most of those other 63 other countries in the world include the US mandate it is to address in some part fuel security and that's probably the foremost authority of this stuff in the country is John Blackburn and it was ex-defense and he's

5:27made a career at advice and this stuff and on as precisely what he said, it should be one of the elements and we, the ethanol plant is one of Moranny right now with the sugar mills. There's the Dolby one that's on mothpools ready to go and manoeuvra they can scale up and I'm told there are about 70% underutilized now so they can scale up immediately and address that the petrol doesn't do anything to these yet but there is the biodiesel in assure I don't understand too much about but that's why I suppose I'm not talking about that man why does that even not even come in the conversation because I'm all for digging more oil out of the ground but building another refinery that's why I've a 10 years down a track and so and he's addressing none of it he's attending it's not much of a problem and doing some little you know that puts the money and yesterday for now so that's not like that's that's catching the surface and really not ignoring the big structural problem that goes the same for the last 20 or 30 years. Mate it's the security issue that I'm worried about and you've said it it's so true you know it's just absolutely being a

6:31diabolical mess and that's the thing you know when you talk about the redistribution our good news out of Longreach obviously they didn't have inundation with flood but the season is set up beautifully for a lot of people but they need to have the services that are so important and and that's the that's the big one you know like it just it is a really really different situation what should take on the Middle East in this conflict mate. Well yeah I don't have a well-informed view but I'd be settling in you know I'd love to think it'd be over soon but we should be preparing for the worst and that's why you know when you're talking about disruptions from these things you know I can't help but go back on the field because like the price is a big thing yet and continues going to be up around the process I've been able to afford big price on the field but much more you know much more important is the actual supply issue and it says

7:34nothing there that's a much bigger problem than the price and obviously too closely linked anyway but yeah maybe you know the Middle East is something we've got to watch and plan around and the government responses need to be mentored with what the scale of the risk is and you know but why should I think this low government would be prepared for anything when I haven't acknowledged this was a risk fee and acknowledged it as a risk in the first place for last 20 or 30 years. We produced 40% of our own fuel only 25 years ago we've produced 10% now the rest of it 90% of it comes from a fire and goes through that there's most of the Western countries and now we're in closer that we're you know far more risky and exposed on this than most of the Western countries you can think of so yeah maybe we're being left to mess and it's more this Middle East conflict carries on it's something's going to have to be very closely with the government and hopefully at some point they'll respond with something to some stands rather than these little quick

8:36fixed things. I appreciate your time Rob thanks so much for being with us mate. Thanks bye bye all the best mate. Good on you we're going to take a break come back plenty more to get through rural coins in today.