SENATOR Ian Macdonald and Bob Katter argue over the merits that free trade has for North Queensland.
The conflict between the two comes after Federal Member for Kennedy, Mr Katter, posted video on the morning after incumbent-president Donald Trump’s election results were announced.
He said that free trade tiers were dead as well as the merits the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), brought about by the consequences of the American election, and of Brexit.
Senator Macdonald said the federal electorate to benefit the most from the TPP would have been Mr Katter’s.
“Because it was good news for sugar and great news for beef,” he said in Julia Creek last Friday. “And why the member for the biggest beef and sugar electorate in Australia is railing against it, I can’t understand it.
“I can only think it’s the ETU or the CFMEU that funded him in the election, and he runs the manufacturing line, and that we should have manufacturing industries in Australia.
“Well, without going into that, maybe we should, maybe we shouldn’t, but it’s not going to happen in Bob Katter’s electorate.
“He’s got beef, he’s got sugar, he’s got horticulture and he’s got minerals.”
Senator Macdonald said he understood from what the Prime Minister was saying that if the TPP doesn’t go through, that Australia would try to use the parts that the US did agree with, therefore boosting the bilateral free trade agreement.
Mr Katter said that thousands of jobs have been lost in North Queensland as a result of imported slave labour products.
The wool industry in central Queensland was ruined by aggressive collective marketing and the minimum price scheme being abolished, affecting 4000 jobs.
“Marketisation has all but abolished the manufacturing of motor vehicles, whitegoods and steel in our country,” Mr Katter said.
“The free market ideology decides we buy all our petrol from the Middle East instead of rural Australia’s own ethanol.
“The free market has sold all of our gas reserves to foreigners.”
