Media Release

Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter today spoke in Parliament House paying tribute to Editor Carenda Jenkin’s Herbert River Express opinion piece (16 Nov 2016) and highlighting the devastation and health hazards caused by flying foxes. Pointing out how the proliferation of the pests are affecting towns in his electorate, including Ingham, Mount Isa, the Tablelands and Mr Katter’s home town, Charters Towers.

“Once again we have the fairly psychotic proposition that the welfare of animals is more important than the lives of human beings and let there be no doubt that these people meet the definition of psychosis. They have not the saintlier of empathy with their fellow human beings. So the Greenies wet fantasies are costing us lives.”

“Whilst in many cases the bats may not be the delivering vector, they are most certainly the originating vector.

Mr Katter said flying fox numbers weren’t a problem until recently.

“Older residents of our towns invariable say they have never seen flying foxes numbers like now. Our First Australians had the boomerang, a killing instrument uniquely designed to deal with bats.

“I have heard the pathetic ravings of the green brigade: ‘We have invaded their habitat.’ In the days when these towns were little tiny hamlets of 100 people there were no flying foxes. The local, natural species wouldn’t be seen in the old ubiquitous ironbark trees, or in the bloodwood trees. You will not even find them in the black wattle tree. But you will find them in the mango trees and the fruit trees in your backyard.

“We human beings were the species that created a paradise there, and it is the flying foxes that have invaded that paradise,” Mr Katter said.

"No self-respecting flying fox would have gone in without packing a cut lunch until we (humans) turned those areas into gardens of paradise for them," he said.

Mr Katter has highlighted the diseases carried by flying foxes.

“It is traumatic to address this issue we absolutely know that your chances of survival are very slim if you contract Hendra of Lyssavirus virus. Very few people are aware that there are numerous other diseases carried by bats whose DNA is very similar to humans. Leptospirosis for example is quite a serious disease but its symptoms are hard to separate from influenza.

Mr Katter has also let fly at the State Government for doing nothing and singled out the State Member for Hinchinbrook for his hypocrisy.

“The towering hypocrisy of people like the local member for Hinchinbrook who was a Minister in the previous LNP Government, there for three years but refused to provide any satisfaction whatsoever on this issue. And within a year of leaving the Ministerial office they have the hypocrisy to say they want something done. When they could have done something they refused to do anything.

Mr Katter’s speech in the Parliament today (adapted from Editor Carenda Jenkin’s Herbert River Express opinion piece, 16 Nov 2016):

“The bats are smelling out the place in hot, steamy weather, pigs and rats are chewing through millions of dollars worth of cane. Whilst feral goats are destroying the natural habitat of an offshore island.

“For decades, Nth Qld has suffered at the hands of these protected species and protected areas. What needs to change is the law before any Council or group can enforce measures to ensure animals and humans can live harmoniously.

At the moment, nothing will change.

Let’s be frank – the Government of today will not do a damn thing.

Nor will the government of tomorrow do something either.

In 2012, a lychee farmer south of Ingham bowed out of the agriculture industry after spending $400,000 fighting conservationists for the right to protect his livelihood against flying foxes. They developed a non-lethal electric fence that deterred flying foxes from the crop with a mild shock that scared them away.

The life of human beings, deadly Hendra, Lyssavirus, Leptospirosis viruses counts for nothing beside the brutal law of the State and its Green Shirts. Bats are in areas and numbers never seen before.

The way our government of today is going, our economic and mental health, our prosperity is at risk because the lives of humans are second to the lives of these intruder, disease ridden aliens.”

##ENDS##