OPINION: MEMBER for Kennedy Bob Katter explains why he backed Rudd over Gillard - and why he thinks the major parties have failed rural Australia.
DURING negotiations to form government in 2010, we chose Tony Abbott’s LNP over Julia Gillard’s ALP based on the response to our 20 policy points for the survival of Australia.
Since then, we have indicated to the LNP that we would be sympathetic to a vote of no confidence, and with no response we put in writing our commitment to a no confidence vote, in a letter hand-delivered personally to Mr Abbott, during last week's final sittings of Parliament.
However, when that offer was not acted on, we could no longer sit on our hands with no-one was driving the bus.
Even though it was clearly not in the best interests of Katter's Australian Party to support Kevin Rudd as better ALP Leader over Ms Gillard, to do otherwise would have committed us to a continuation of bus with no driver and a landslide victory, which would not be in this country's best interests.
But we continue to have no confidence in the ALP-LNP 'corporations' that run this country whilst they continue to facilitate, for instance, the decimation of our manufacturing and food production industries; the influx of 1 million foreign workers since 1996 at the expense of 1.3 million Australians currently seeking a full-time job; the skyrocketing cost of living; or the overseas sell-off of one-tenth of our agricultural lands - to name but a few of their sins against our nation's sovereignty.
Changing the board of directors won't change these major party corporations' free market obsession - so it doesn't matter if Billy Billabong is Prime Minister because he's still beholden to a major party whose ideologies have proved in the worst interests of this nation and its people.
Our party, however, is a voice of the people.
And if the people deliver us power in the Senate, we guarantee that we will vote, for example, to ensure the LNP does repeal the carbon tax.
But we will also use that power to stop any LNP proposal to impose a GST on food.
We now hope this long-awaited election can be a contest of policies not personalities, not a contest between two parties with identical policies.
