KENNEDY MP, Bob Katter, has thrown his support behind Hunter MP, Joel Fitzgibbon, who is calling on the Federal Government to intervene in the domestic gas market with prices surging as high as $27 a gigajoule, which is as much as $10 a gigajoule above export prices.

“The price of gas is critical for Australia to be competitive on the world market,” Mr Katter said.

“Just about everything we still make or produce in Australia is reliant on affordable gas prices, and that includes mining, mineral processing, steel and aluminium. Gas has a part to play, and if it is expensive, we are out of the game.

“Joel Fitzgibbon is right in calling upon the Government to intervene in this situation. To single out the Minister is unfair since the LNP Government is wholly committed to free-market policies. Both the major parties have sold out this country with their ideological obsession with the free market.

“What sort of country sells its gas at 6 cents a gigajoule and then buys it back on the world market for these ridiculously high prices?”

Mr Katter said there should be a reserve resource policy on domestically produced coal and gas, which would see the resources be made available for Australian industry at next to no cost.

“24 or 25 million people in Australia will agree with me,” he said. “They want to see us make things in this country again, and we can only do that with cheap coal and gas fired power. The car manufacturing industry was wiped out five years ago and with-it 50,000 direct jobs and a further 50,000 indirect jobs.

“The LNP has committed itself to the free-market ideology that no other country on earth follows.

“China has spat upon the free-trade deal they struck with the Abbott Government and left us high and dry with $29b in lost exports. So much for your free-markets Mr LNP. The free trade deals count for nothing.”