FOUR additional Members of Parliament lobbied by Mount Isa Rob Katter in a parliamentary bill would cost the Queensland Treasury more than $1.5 million a year.
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Each member would cost about $412,000 annually, according to an estimate done by a government source which included the member’s and staff salary, travel allowances and one electorate office.
Mr Katter’s bill to be voted in parliament this week was aimed to increase the number of electorates from 89 to 93, with the extra seats to be formed from rural areas.
The State member said the cost of four additional members was “irrelevant” when told by the reporter of the amount.
An argument that Queensland had enough politicians was untrue considering it was the only State that had no senate, Mr Katter said.
Brisbane was becoming a “sinkhole” as more people left rural Queensland and moved to metropolitan areas, therefore increasing the size of rural electorates over time to fit the required population they had to have.
And members of rural electorates such as Mount Isa, which in the past was described by the KAP member to be almost as big as France, were disadvantaged over city based members because of the number of hospitals, schools, police stations and area they had to cover.
It made it difficult to compete against the state’s funding and allocated resources towards necessary infrastructure, he said.
Infrastructure and further investment would increase the population in rural areas; lack of it was causing more people to flood the south east, which therefore increased its political representation over time.
He considered Labor’s resistance as political strategy.
“Traditional bush voters aren’t labor voters.”
A predecessor of Mr Katter’s role, Mount Isa Mayor Tony McGrady, said the absence of an upper house in Queensland was not justification for more politicians.
“We’re not (short) because we have parliamentary committees that do the work of the upper house,” the former Labor minister said.
“This is a ploy to get more conservative members in the Queensland Parliament.”
Australia was “overrun by politicians” and four more state members were not going to solve drought or the economic downturn, Cr McGrady said.
He referred to Katter’s Australian Party’s bill as stealthy “gerrymandering”.