Labor and Liberal ignore creating a Reserve Resource Policy

 In media reports today, the Prime Minister said the revelations are “very concerning” and he’ll be holding an urgent meeting of chief executives of east coast gas companies to find out, “how they plan to address this threat to their customers.”

Katter prepares Resource Reserve policy bill to keep gas for domestic use

 KAP Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter will be introducing into Parliament a Bill to enact a Reserve Resource Policy, (a policy where some of the gas is kept for Australians).

 Mr Katter said, “We’ve already instructed the Parliamentary Draftsman to move on the Bill.

 “We will be having discussions with a number of key players in the industry. We feel that there are at least three Government Members who will stand up on this issue.

 “Almost every fertiliser producing country on earth (di-ammonium phosphate) has a Reserve Resource Policy. They get the ammonia (natural gas) for three or four dollars but Australian fertiliser companies are paying nearly 15 dollars.

 “We have a steel industry with threatened closure, copper refineries closing, aluminium expansions abandoned, nickel refineries closed.

 “And the Government’s answer is to call a meeting with Mr Foreign Gas Corporation? ‘Oh please, can you please give us some of our gas?’ We won’t be asking – we will be telling them!

 “We will see if any of the LNP Members have the guts to stand up for Australian industry and Australian workers or if they’re going to be a bunch of cowards.

 “The PM’s bleating is humiliating for all of ‘we Australians’ putting the begging-bowl out to giant foreign gas corporations who are not there to provide security of supply. They are there to maximise profits from the gas that we gave them for virtually nothing.

 “It sure would be nice if an LNP person stood up on Economic Sovereignty where some of them will die in the ditches on social policy. It sure would be nice if they would show the same commitment on Economic Sovereignty and the morality of selling all of our resources to foreign corporations so that the southern states are left shivering in winter and the north swelters in summer. Neither can afford to pay the prices that gas owners (all foreign corporations) are charging Australians for their own gas.

 “Huey Long, the 40th Governor of Louisiana was the most popular politician in human history. He introduced a Reserve Resource Policy on Louisiana’s gas so the people of the Louisiana were entitled to that gas for no more than the cost of production.

 “In Qld under the much maligned Bjelke-Petersen Government, we had a Reserve Resource Policy. The bulk of Qld’s electricity came from overburdened coal which the Government took for free under a Reserve Resource Policy. Qld had the cheapest electricity in the world and we were the biggest mineral processing state on earth: aluminium, nickel, zinc, copper…

 “Now Qld is on the National Grid and pays National Competition Policy prices and so we suffer the second highest electricity prices in the world.

 “Successive governments have brought us to this impasse: no manufacturing, no mineral processing, and some of the highest electricity prices in the world.

 “Pensioners can have a feed or turn the lights on; but they can’t do both.  That’s of course when you can get the electricity to turn on. It will become increasingly unreliable.

 “As Minister (in the QLD Government), we kept a 30 per cent spending reserve in electricity. We had transmission lines that enabled the 30 per cent reserve in almost every part of the state. We had absolute security of supply. We could lose six of our 22 major generating units and not a have single light out in Qld.

 “Under national competition policy there is no guarantee of supply on the grid. Prices have gone up 300 per cent in 15 years. In the 30 years prior to that, prices only went up a little over 30.”