05 May Thousands of Queenslanders hit panic button on ‘climate change’ policy gone mad

30 April 2024

When first told about a plan by the international commodities company Glencore to dump industrial waste into the Great Artesian Basin, Katter’s Australian Party Leader and Member for Traeger, Robbie Katter couldn’t believe what he heard.

“I thought they can’t be serious!” he said.

But after twelve years in the Queensland Parliament, Mr Katter has almost heard it all.

“You’d think the fact that the Great Artesian Basin supports life itself west of the Great Divide, generates $13 billion in economic activity, and is one of the largest sources of potable water in the world, would mean it is classed as sacrosanct, but no; the former Federal LNP Government waved Glencore’s application to pollute it through, and the Queensland ALP government is the last hurdle,” he said.

A petition to the Queensland Parliament by Queensland Farmers Federation CEO Jo Shepard calling for protection of the Great Artesian Basin from carbon capture and storage was sponsored by Robbie Katter MP and has received more than 12,500 signatures in only a few weeks.

Mr Katter said in a race to show ‘climate change credentials’ to inner city voters, Brisbane and Canberra’s government bureaucracies have offered up inland Queensland and Australia as a sacrifice to the emissions reduction gods.

“Rushed and flawed policy has spawned incentives for multinational companies, such as Glencore, to capture the emissions from their coal-powered power plants and inject that waste into the pristine water of the Great Artesian Basin – and pay them for doing so!” he said.

“This goes to demonstrate the disastrous outcomes that are allowed to perpetuate when elected members and their political masters drink the climate change Kool-Aid.

“Ill-conceived policies that on paper are said to ‘reduce carbon emissions’ are being rushed through, without a thought to the communities, industry, and jobs that are jeopardised,” the member for Traeger said.

Conspicuous by their absence in any genuine debate or defence of the life sustaining water is the LNP and the Greens.

KAP Leader Mr Katter said he was astounded that the Greens and the LNP aren’t joining the KAP led chorus in their vehement defence of Inland Queensland’s reason for existence.

“Once upon a time the LNP would tell you that they are the voice of the country.  Well, I’m listening and I’m barely hearing boo!

“Where were the Queensland LNP when the agricultural lobby groups fronted up to the Federal Court of Australia, in their watershed ‘The Castle’ moment?

“Why have the Queensland LNP and the Greens ignored more than twelve thousand Queenslanders in their pleas to ‘Save the Great Artesian Basin’?

“All I can deduce is that the Brisbane parties are content to throw inland Queensland to the wolves (or dingos) and seek the votes of ill-informed woke city voters.

“Carbon emissions targets are more than nice motherhood statements that help do-gooding city voters sleep at night – they are environment, community, and industry destroying policies with no regard for the real Queensland that is outside of Brisbane,” Mr Katter said.

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