QLD:Katter urges union to save sugar industry

AAP General News (Australia)
02-15-2011
QLD:Katter urges union to save sugar industry

GOLD COAST, Feb 15 AAP - Federal independent MP Bob Katter has urged the Australian
Workers' Union to help save Queensland's sugar industry from ruin by campaigning for wider
ethanol use.

The north Queensland MP made the plea at the powerful union's biennial conference on Tuesday.

"I'm on my best bended knees, I personally, desperately need, and the 200,000 Australians
that I represent, desperately need, the AWU," Mr Katter told the conference.

"At this point of time in Queensland, the sugar industry is a bigger employer than
the coal industry and it's simply closing down."

Seven Queensland sugar mills had closed in nine years, leaving only 22 - about the
same number Brazil was opening every year, Mr Katter claimed.

Just last week the Babinda sugar mill, south of Cairns, announced it will be shutting
down and more than 60 jobs will be lost.

Legislation in Australia limits ethanol use to 10 per cent of petrol and, unless that
changed, there was no hope for the industry's 50,000 workers, he said.

Mr Katter said federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had been receptive to the issue
when he was seeking support from the independents to form a minority government, but it
had been a coalition government that limited ethanol production.

Queensland's Labor Premier Anna Bligh had been just as inactive, he said.

"The NSW government has moved and they haven't got any sugar," he told reporters.

The AWU will on Wednesday launch an anti-trade dumping campaign, a principle Mr Katter
- with his banana and cane-growing constituency - supported.

"This country now is right down to only two industries. All we've got left in this
country is iron ore and coal," he said.

"Sure they're going through the roof, well, make the best of it, you've got an economy
now that instead of having 20 or 30 items, now has only two.

"You're on the narrowest of narrow economic foundations."

AAP gd/dep

KEYWORD: AWU KATTER

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