Letter to My Fellow Australians from Bob Katter

LET US GO TO ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS

EASY         OBVIOUS           &      COSTS NO MONEY

These figures by definition are notional, not specific. Some extrapolation of necessity has been used. They are taken from reports and submissions to government, and or to financiers. The figures supplied, for clarity, are rounded off. The employment figures use the economist’s rule of ‘ten jobs for every million dollars created’.

1. All motor vehicles purchased under a govt. contract must be Australian made.

Increased Income for the Aust. Econ. $4000m per year.

Creating an Extra 40,000 jobs.

2. Ethanol blended at 10% into all motor vehicle fuels. Introduction over a 5 year period. On the Brazilian experience this percentage will grow to a 50% content.

Increased Income for Aust. Econ. $12,000m per year.
Creating an Extra 120,000 jobs.

3. Adopt international standards for Prawn, Fish and Crayfish production.[14]

Increased Income for Aust. Econ. $10,000m per year.
Creating an Extra 100,000 jobs.

4. In Northern Australia,

(a)  Provide Landowners (cattle station, small holdings, and blockies) with irrigation rights and freeholding[15] on (a maximum) 300ha (but only for owner-operators)[16].

(b) Provide “First Australians” (e.g. Land trust areas) with “Ownership Title Deeds.[17]

(c) Provide small towns with the right to Micro Irrigation Schemes.

These three measures will take North Eastern Australia cattle herd from 4.8m to 9m.[18] And bring turnoff, now 1:6 in line with the rest of Aust. 1:3.

Increased income for the Aust. Econ. $4000m per year.
Creating an Extra  40,000 jobs.

[1] Thailand with less suitable land and water than N. Qld produces around $10,000m ea yr in prawn production alone. Aust. regulatory impositions literally decimated the Prawn industry.

[1] Out of 100,000,000 hectares of land in N. Qld this irrigation programme, much of it aspirational, would even if it could be achieved still only irrigate 330,000 hectares of little mosaic plots.

[1] All N. Qld cattlemen have only pastoral leases which have no freeholding rights and no water rights.

[1] On First Australian (aboriginal) Lands, there is no legal mechanism that can provide a title deed – no title deed – no security for a bank loan – no bank loan –no development.

[1] A normal cattle herd can double in size every four years. However, to date there has not been the carrying capacity to enable this to happen.  Lack of watering points, fenced paddocks, no answer to our annual protein drought, these obstacles have made it almost impossible to move above 5m carrying capacity. Irrigation will enable us to double our capacity.

5. Issue permits to mine silicon sand reserves in Nth Eastern Aust.

Increased income for the Aust. Econ. $4,000m per year.

Creating an Extra 40,000 jobs.

6. North Australia Development Authority (NADA) set up and functioning to borrow money and build ‘developmental’ infrastructure – specifically a canal from the Gulf of Carpentaria at Burketown South to near the town of Gregory, to provide an FHT (Floating Harbour Transhipper) and barges to facilitate the mining of phosphate, and a major processing plant, to create one of the world’s bigger fertiliser plants (as well as facilitating giant prawn farming operations.[19])

Increased income for the Aust. Econ. $4,000m per year.
Creating an Extra 40,000 jobs.

[1] These three items, canal, FHT and barges would require $200m of government bond raisings, repaid by production of 5m t per yr, creating a transportation cost of $6 per tonne. Currently transport costs on rail to Townsville are $67 per tonne. Large deposits of Cu, Ag, Pb and Zn can and will utilise this the cheapest transportation form. But the major mineral resource that requires this bulk transportation is phosphate. Stranded gas and sulphur are available in this area, so there is little difficulty in proceeding with a full fertiliser plant producing $800 per tonne of fertiliser instead of the $120 per tonne for raw rock phosphate.   

France’s Louis XIV the Sun King, Russian’s Peter the Great, America’s Franklin Roosevelt. What made them famous was the building of their ubiquitous waterway canals.