Katter’s Kennedy Federal budget wrap - 2024

May 14, 2024

KATTER’S Australian Party MP Bob Katter has expressed his disappointment with the 2024 Federal Budget with very few Kennedy-specific funding allocations announced.

Mr Katter while there were some positives for regional Australia, which would capture Kennedy, the details on funding were few and far between.


He said overall, the budget lacked long-term vision, and critical details towards real actionable initiatives. Instead, there was increased funding for government departments to “improve regulatory compliance, or streamline workforces, or develop new reporting systems.”


He welcomed the parts of the government’s Future Made in Australia fund which provided funding for critical minerals and their processing, as well as “low carbon fuel” such as ethanol, but again, lacked succinct detail.


“The 2024 Budget will do little more than limp the government to the next election, providing no serious reform and offer little more than a few lollies,” Mr Katter said.

 

Cost of living


  • Stage 3 tax cuts – averaging about $36 per week. Plus reduce the 19 per cent tax rate to 16 per cent, reduce 32.5 per cent tax rate to 30 per cent and increase the 37 per cent tax rate threshold from $120,000 to $135,000.
  • $300 energy bill relief.
  • Waiving $3bn in student debt, or which is less than $1300 for the average student.


“Disappointing that Government has missed the opportunity for real reform to assist families with differing incomes through income splitting options that would allow an income to be split before the tax is assessed between the working parent and the stay-at-home parent.


“Such a measure would reduce the tax burden on families with dependants and allow them to have similar tax burdens, relative to their joint incomes, to those couples that have dual incomes and no kids.


“And for electricity, there should be no reason its costs more than $700 per year, by introducing a Reserved Resource Policy.


Grocery prices

  • Government will fund market competition organisation CHOICE for three years to produce quarterly price comparison reports for consumers. First report at end of June.
  • For farmers and suppliers, government is looking at making the Grocery Code of Conduct mandatory and introducing penalties of up to 10 per cent of turnover for breaches.

“How giving consumers will benefit from having a ‘choice’ of where they shop based on a quarterly survey is beyond me, and making the Grocery Code of Conduct mandatory, after all the major grocers were already signatories, will do little for suppliers.”


Housing

  • Total $32bn housing spend under this government with the latest including $9bn split between each state and territory for social housing, and $1bn for housing infrastructure.
  • $19.7m over six years to support housing research, fast-track feasibility studies on the release of Commonwealth land for social housing.
  • Commonwealth rent assistance increase by 10 per cent.


“We have the land, we just need a government with a vision that looks beyond further crowding the major cities.


“Again no deadlines on when these social homes will be built, yet nothing to assist the supply of housing in the private sector.”


Defence

  • $17.5m over ten years to establish a new Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence to support increased oversight, transparency, and accountability of the portfolio.
  • $186m over four years to reduce the time taken to process veterans’ claims.
  • $1bn over three years for long-range firearms, fuel resilience and robotic systems. 
  • $35m to upgrade ADF bases in Northern Australia – primarily Townsville.


“This is a substantial sum of money and we must make sure we are getting value,” Mr Katter said.


“A clear message must be sent to the world that we are serious about protecting ourselves and our way of living.


“It’s hard to provide such a message when we have successive governments that allows for the foreign acquisition of strategic assets, including our ports, electricity providers, communication networks, banks, airlines, airports and vast tracts of our land.”


“If we are to spend $330 billion on security we should also revise the foreign acquisition strategy and start reclaiming our most important assets,” said Mr Katter.

 

Roads and transport

  • $1bn for the Roads to Recovery Program
  • $200m for the Safer Local Roads and Infrastructure Program
  • $154m over six years to implement the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard including $84m over five years to establish a regulator and $10m on awareness campaign.
  • $101m over five years for remote and regional airstrips.


“I encourage all councils in my electorate to apply for the Roads to Recovery Program, and I’m confident we can secure the funding for the completion of the Hann Hwy, benefiting producers throughout North Queensland.


“As for the vehicle efficiency standard, the government must realise this will impact more than just the people out bush. There are plenty of people in regional cities like Townsville and Cairns, throughout Australia, that enjoy four-wheel drives who will be unfairly punished with this standard.”


Infrastructure

  • $2.2bn to enhance connectivity, and increase accessibility and reliability of South East Queensland transport networks.
  • A total infrastructure contribution of $21.6bn for Queensland, of that $1.2bn will go to the Sunshine Coast Rail Line, and just $467m for the Bruce Hwy corridor.
  • National Water Grid - $174m over six years for new water infrastructure projects.


$592.3 million over five years from 2023–24 for the Paradise Dam Improvement project, the Big Rocks Weir project and the Hughenden Irrigation Scheme has been deferred.

 

“What a joke! This package is beyond disappointing, it includes nothing ‘nation building,’ nothing that will generate economic growth, nothing that will create more than a few jobs.


“In Kennedy public transport is almost non-existent. We have some of the worse roads in Australia. The only access to the land west of the diving range and literally crumbling. Budget after budget we see more money siphoned from the regions and given to the cities for grandiose white-elephant projects.”

 

Health

  • Previously announced tripling of bulk billing system remains - $3.5bn.
  • $17m over the next year to boost support of healthcare in areas of shortage including GPs. ‘
  • $2.2bn over five years for aged care, with most going towards administration initiatives including improving regulation and compliance, but including $531m to release 24,100 additional home care packages.
  • An additional 29 Medicare Urgent Care clinics.


“This increased funding is applauded. It is hoped that this will ensure those that live outside major cities will have improved access to essential health services.”

 

Agriculture

  • $519m over eight years for the Future Drought Fund initiatives including education and farming practices incentives to boost drought preparedness, online climate tools.
  • $1m over two years for a skilled agricultural work liaison pilot to attract graduates to work in agriculture.
  • $1.5m to improve accuracy and labelling of plant-based alternative protein products.
  • Already 75 per cent sheep gone, 23 per cent of cattle is gone due to deregulations. The wokie green brigade are at it again to please their ideology. 
  • $107m to help farmers and the supply chain transition away from live sheep exports, yet this package also includes $2.6m to improve sheep welfare standards.
  • $32m over four years for programs protecting water security in the Great Artesian Basin.

“Besides some funding for the GAB, and potential funding for actual drought relief, this is again woke ideology running its course, destroying agriculture.”

 

Energy and Environment

  • $5m over the next year for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to engage tourism operators to conduct reef monitoring and protection.
  • $7bn over four years to Snowy Hydro to support continued construction.

“As for the Marine Park Authority, well the government has already destroyed all our industries out there with Spanish Mackerel bans and gillnet bans so there’s not much left to protect.


“And is it any surprise Snowy is the only power generation they’re funding. While we’ve got 9000mw of baseload power going off, we’ve only got one, delayed, source coming online. 


Social and welfare

  • $161m over four years to develop and implement a National Firearms Register. “Once established police will know where firearms are, who owns them and what the risks are.”


“To be disarming people while crime is at all time high is unconscionable.”


  • $288m over four years to support the delivery of the Digital ID system.


“May I just remind our government how unreliable digital systems are; with traditional banking, how often would a bank get robbed? Hardly ever, now with digital banking there’s problems every week with hackers.”


  • ·        $1.1bn over four years to pay superannuation on Paid Parental Leave.


“I support this incentive.”

 

Telecommunications

  • $150m for the Black Spot Program


“We must urge all councils to apply for the money. The more requests that go in the better.”


Education

  • $88m over three years for 20,000 new fee-free training places through TAFE.
  • $5.3m over two years for the Good to Great Schools Australia Pilot program which claims it will benefit outer regional and remote schools to lift their education outcomes.

 

Other

  • $48m over the next year for ASIC to sustain operational activities and “enhance its core capabilities.”
  • $35m to the Director of Public Prosecutions to strengthen capacity to undertake criminal prosecutions.


Support


  • $14.2m over two years to improve community safety in Alice Springs and surrounds.


“Why can’t we then get money to solve North Queensland’s crime problem with outback camps – relocation sentencing.” 



  • $1bn over five years to address migration backlogs, which includes $115m over four years to establish two migration hubs dedicated to hearing migration and protection matters, currently before the courts.

 

The Great Australian Dream Has Become a Debt

By Kahla Kruger • May 25, 2026
Australia was once a country where an ordinary Australian could buy a home, raise a family and have the mortgage knocked over by 30. Today, young Australians are being sold a very different dream, a lifetime on the hamster wheel, saddled with million-dollar mortgages they may never escape.

PODCAST: The Big Budget of Bugger All

By Kahla Kruger • May 13, 2026
In this episode of Wisdom Mongrel Patriot, Bob Katter and Elise deliver a blunt dissection of the 2026 Federal Budget - and ask the question many in the bush are already asking: where exactly does Regional Australia fit into the nation’s future? Where does self-sufficiency fit? Where does the Australia we used to know and love fit?

Bob Katter Attends Battle of the Coral Sea Commemorations in Cardwell

By Kahla Kruger • May 7, 2026
Bob Katter, KENNEDY MP, has attended commemorations for the Battle of the Coral Sea in Cardwell over the weekend, joining veterans, families, community members and local organisations in paying tribute to those who served during one of the most significant naval battles of World War II.P The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought in May 1942, marked a major turning point in the Pacific War and is widely recognised as the battle that helped halt the Japanese advance towards Australia. Mr Katter said commemorative events like the Cardwell service were critically important in ensuring Australians never forgot the sacrifices made by servicemen and women who defended the nation. “These men and women stood up when their country needed them most. Many never came home, and many others carried the scars of war for the rest of their lives,” Mr Katter said. “Events like this are about paying our respects and making sure younger generations understand the price that was paid for the freedoms we enjoy today. “Regional communities have always carried a very strong tradition of service. You see it right across North Queensland and I have spent untold hours in pubs talking to families who have served generation after generation in defence of this country.” Mr Katter also thanked organisers, veterans and volunteers involved in the commemorations for ensuring the legacy of Australia’s servicemen and women continues to be honoured. “As Australians, we have a duty to remember them. Ceremonies like the Battle of the Coral Sea commemorations keep that spirit of remembrance alive.” ENDS

Nearly 50 Years of Country Music Magic: The Story Behind the Charters Towers Country Music Festival

By Kahla Kruger • May 7, 2026
What started as a small idea tossed over a meat pie in a bakery in 1977, has has turned into one of the biggest drawcard events for North Queensland.

Katter backs in farmers’ pre-Budget ethanol plea to fuel our future

By Kahla Kruger • May 5, 2026
6 May 2026: After spending half his 50-year political life fighting to secure a home-grown supply of cleaner and greener biofuels, Federal MP Bob Katter has backed in an historic alliance of agricultural heavyweights united behind a national ethanol mandate – to protect our health and enable our iconic feedstock industries to deliver greater fuel self-sufficiency – at the highest levels of government.  Following direct discussions with Canberra in the wake of yesterday’s joint plea by Australia’s peak grain and sugarcane representatives for sustainably produced ethanol-blended petrol to be mandated nationwide, the North Queensland MP called on the Federal Government to “provide reassurances that the long-overdue implementation of an enforced ethanol mandate is being considered at the highest levels of government” ahead of next week’s Budget, amid the world’s worst energy shock strangling global supply chains and crippling domestic industries. “Ethanol and biodiesel production can be immediately scaled up within a year to extend our existing fuel stockpiles – instead of being shipped off to safeguard other countries’ fuel security because demand from the foreign oil giants for Australian-owned biofuels is still not growing even in the case of domestic supply disruptions and soaring prices,” said Mr Katter. “However, in just 10 years, sustainably Australian-grown and manufactured renewable ethanol could be supplying 10 per cent of Australia’s total domestic petrol requirements, alongside local biodiesel for another five per cent self-sufficiency if there was a biofuels mandate.” The alliance of the National Farmers Federation, GrainGrowers, Australian Sugar Manufacturers and CaneGrowers behind a domestic biofuels mandate follows two decades of both the major and green parties’ rejection of seven of Mr Katter’s private members bills* since 2002 for sovereign biofuels security – with 200 (or one-fifth of all) speeches to Parliament referencing ethanol and biofuels about 1000 times since his 1993 election to the seat of Kennedy; and state laws for ethanol mandates moved by KAP MPs along with dozens more ethanol representations to the Queensland Parliament by Traeger MP Robbie Katter since 2012. “Our laws have been laughed out of Parliament by every government this century,” said Mr Katter after repeated warnings of an inevitable fuel supply crisis facing an island nation left to become dependent on imports without future-proofing our critical fuel and food industries – including the Sovereign Fuel Security Bill 2022 drafted with crossbenchers in the pandemic-era Liberal-National government, for the new Labor Government to secure 80 per cent fuel sufficiency (by banning oil exports for local refining with biofuels) and reliable power and fertiliser inputs for vulnerable industrial and regional communities. “Whilst two of the world’s ‘big-four’ export industries in Australian grain and sugar join everyday Australians screaming for greater fuel self-sufficiency – with no end in sight to the Middle East war shock on global supply chains – governments must act immediately to secure our biofuels future with primary producers and local manufacturers in the national interest, and expand domestic refining to include our own indigenous oil reserves sold offshore for a fraction of the price it costs us to buy back, from our foreign overlords, as 90 per cent of our refined fuel needs.” Mr Katter was equally scathing of the commercially conflicted big oil and motoring groups who for years pushed back against ethanol-blended fuel mandates instituted in 2007 by the NSW Government, to prevent deaths from carcinogenic aromatics and tailpipe emissions that ethanol instead reduces – “which is why more than 60 countries have already moved to ethanol, without all their cars breaking down all over the place” and increased ethanol content to almost one-third of Brazil’s petrol; 20 per cent now mandated in India (five years ahead of national targets to cut oil imports, reduce emissions and support domestic agricultural industries); 15 per cent in the United States, and 10 per cent in China. “So all the lies about engine incompatibility peddled through a complicit media, they can share the guilt of needless deaths of thousands of people in our big cities from small particle emissions,” said Mr Katter. “And we will be moving our legislation once again, to hold every major party and greenie politician to account to the Australian people, as to why we’re one of the last countries on Earth – apart from New Zealand, Africa, and the oil-producing nations like Russia, South America and Venezuela – to future-proof our renewable biofuels self-sufficiency without even spending a cent on a mandate, as well as protecting our health and hip pockets, along with our iconic regional industries and communities.” ENDS * Following the Fuel Quality Standards (Renewable Content of Motor Vehicle Fuel) Amendment Bills put to the Australian Parliament as an Independent MP in 2002, 2005 and 2006, the Katter’s Australian Party MP further moved his Renewable Fuel Bills in 2013, 2016 and 2017, and the Sovereign Fuel Security Bill in 2022.

Wisdom, Mongrel, Patriot - Episode 3: Nation Building or Nation Bleeding? Bob Katter's battle for "make money infrastructure"

By Kahla Kruger • March 26, 2026

Halve fuel excise or watch fruit rot, shelves empty

By Kahla Kruger • March 17, 2026
KAP Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has written to the Prime Minister to immediately halve fuel excise to deliver emergency relief from record price pressures crippling the nation’s freight industry, and protect Australia’s primary producers. Mr Katter has warned the PM that farmers and freight operators being crushed by fuel costs across North Queensland are now reaching breaking point – with the escalating threat to their viability raising alarm that Australia’s biggest banana-growing region faces the prospect of fruit being left to rot this season, due to prohibitive fuel prices for harvest and transport. “If we fail to act quickly, the consequences will not be limited to regional Australia,” Mr Katter wrote to the PM. “When farmers in Kennedy cannot afford to harvest and transport their produce, supermarket shelves across the nation will feel the impact.” Mr Katter said that while farmers, truck drivers and families struggled under exorbitant fuel costs, the Commonwealth Government continued to collect both fuel excise and GST on every litre sold – “still taking the cream from every bowser while the people who grow and transport our food are pushed closer to the brink”. With the North Queensland electorate of Kennedy accounting for one of the nation’s largest and most productive food bowls – growing 90 per cent of Australia’s bananas for our second-most bought supermarket item, after toilet paper – Mr Katter said reports of growers now questioning whether they could afford to harvest fruit this season were “an unacceptable situation for a country as wealthy and resource-rich as Australia”. “We are being told farmers are letting fruit rot as the cost of picking it and trucking it to market no longer stacks up. That should send a chill through every government office in this country.” With immense pressure on the road freight industry that underpins agricultural supply chains, major North Queensland operators fear the unsustainable burden of out-of-control fuel costs. “Companies such as Blenner’s Transport and Curley's Transport – the lifeblood of our supply chain in North Queensland, moving produce from paddocks to plates – they are left with no choice but to pass on those increasing costs down the line,” said Mr Katter. “And the people at the very bottom of that chain are our farmers.” Mr Katter said halving the fuel excise would deliver relief not just to freight companies and farmers, but also families across the country. “This is a simple decision the Prime Minister can make right now to protect Australia’s farmers and the supply chain that feeds this nation.” ENDS

Wisdom, Mongrel, Patriot - Episode 2: Bob sinks the boot into government for selling Australia off and out

By Kahla Kruger • March 12, 2026

Wisdom, Mongrel, Patriot Podcast - Teasers

By Kahla Kruger • March 10, 2026

Labor is drunk on power – killing the bush pub and Australia’s soul next in line in ‘woke agenda’

By Kahla Kruger • February 4, 2026
KENNEDY MP Bob Katter MP led a scathing attack on the Albanese Government’s handling of the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 in Parliament, calling it un-Australian and warning that it was clear Labor was drunk on power moving legislation that threatens the heart of Aussie culture – having a beer at the local pub. “The original Labor Party was born in the pubs of Australia. These fellas in those days would quite literally drag you out of a pub and punch you in the face if you didn’t take a union ticket out – yet here we are, debating a law that taxes beer. I cannot think of a better example of just how dangerous and drunk on power the Labor party have become. They are now threatening the very fabric of our social and community life,” Mr Katter said. The Bill before Parliament seeks to freeze the automatic inflation-linked increase on draught beer excise for a two-year period from 1 August 2025 to 1 August 2027 but Mr Katter wants the increase scrapped indefinitely. Mr Katter seconded his crossbench colleague, Barnaby Joyce’s, second reading amendment of removing the annual increase to keep alive an Australia tradition. “Australia's identity very much comes out of the bush pub, and you are eroding the identity of Australians if you take that away. You are also eroding our ability to talk to each other,” Mr Katter said. Mr Katter, who is infamous for talking with patrons of pubs all over Australia, said one of the most important places to learn about the state of politics and the state of the nation was by talking to people having a beer. “As a member of parliament, I like to find out what people are thinking and what their attitude is towards the government's policies and the best way to do that is to go down to the local hotel. “I’ve been shown an interesting graph which shows suicides amongst males in Australia – parallels the graph of the decline of the hotels and people going into the pubs. “I know that, if I myself am really down, I just go down to the pub, have a lot of good fun with my mates and go home a lot happier and more relaxed than before. But, for people who are more traumatised by reality than, probably, I am, it really is a matter of life and death in many cases, and that's not an exaggeration. “There's a little town called Maxwelton, and I love pulling up there because of all the cockies in the area and all the contractors and various other people that are employed in the cattle and sheep industry. You find out what's going on. You could have a good time at the Maxwelton pub. Well, it doesn't exist anymore, because of the impositions that government placed upon it.” Mr Katter warned that while a freeze may superficially lower the pressure on draught beer prices, many in the hospitality and brewing sectors argue that a broader reform is needed to sustain small venues and local producers. “Beer is tradition, it is community, and it is part of our social fabric. A two-year freeze on indexation isn’t enough when pubs are struggling under rising costs, regulatory burdens and declining patrons,” Mr Katter added. “In the end, it’s about more than beer. It’s about protecting our way of life, our towns, and the simple Aussie traditions that bind us together,” Mr Katter concluded. ENDS