Media Release

Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has called meetings in Ingham and Innisfail next week to address the future of marketing arrangements for Australian sugar, which will be attended by KAP State MPs Shane Knuth and Robbie Katter, who hold a balance of power position in the Queensland Parliament.

Chairs of the leading cane growing groups will also attend, together with Australia’s largest ethanol producer and major sugar refiner, Manildra Group.

Bob Katter said today that he was expecting a big crowd at the meetings, but that people needed to attend in order that the issue would be taken seriously when the State Parliament reconvened.

“If we’re not going to fight then you can’t expect our members of Parliament to fight,” Bob Katter said.

“It’s no use going to the ALP and LNP on these issues, they’ve been there for the last 6 years, but the KAP members along with Billy Gordon MP, State Member for Cook, now have more power than the ALP and LNP.

“If people are quite happy with having a big foreign corporation tell them how much they pay for their sugar and keep us completely in the dark with a deregulated export operation, then that’s fine.

“But there’s good reason why the industry had done it a certain way for a 100 years and there’s a very good reason why people like Wilmar don’t want to do it.

“We cannot merely rely on the Senate Inquiry where Senators will go shooting their mouths off to please the crowd. We had exactly the same thing at the ARDB Senate hearings – the Senators all sung from the same hymn sheet but then they wiped us like a dirty rag.

“We’re after fair dinkum hard decisions, the kind that were made regularly when the old Country party was flying high.

“If you want that back, you’ve got to fight for it. You need to come along to these meetings and tell the people with power what needs to be done,” Bob Katter said.

The meetings follow a Senate Inquiry held in Townsville last month which saw total unanimity within the sugar industry for the first time, according to Bob Katter, in his lifetime.

Speaking at the time he said that everyone who attended the inquiry was opposed to the deregulation of QSL’s marketing powers and in favour of the restoration of marketing powers to the farmers.

“The farmers have paid and will continue to pay a very high price for deregulation.

“Unlike most other sectors of the Australian economy, there is a straight out monopoly in sugar. The farmer either sells to his local mill or he doesn’t sell.

“It’s not like cattle, milk or grain. Whereas even grain fetches $200 to $300 a tonne, sugar sells for only $30 a tonne. So the farmer can’t afford to send his sugar 200kms up the road to the next mill or he won’t have any operating profit left.

“There must be a return to a fairness tribunal setting the price that the monopoly miller pays the farmer,” Mr Katter said.