The pace is heating up for candidates on the election trail as the campaign enters its final days.
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A day after the Traeger candidate forum, Robbie Katter was talking about the forum, in particular the issue of price gouging by the major airlines in the North West.
He linked to a video his own people took on the night of him talking about the issue and saying to Qantas not to tell him it was simply an issue of people booking their flights early but they kept coming back to that.
“I tried in earnest to do something from the start,” Mr Katter said.
“I spoke to the Transport Minister on countless occasions, I’ve been calling for a review in parliament and the deputy premier finally got a report with four recommendations and then Qantas came out with their local residents scheme, which was the first time they’ve even acknowledged there was a problem out here.”
Mr Katter also hit out at the Uber industry on Wednesday.
“Not only do they operate an unlicensed, unregulated service, now we learn that Uber simply cannot be trusted to protect their drivers and customer's personal data,” he said.
“Take a taxi. Support a local business.”
ALP candidate Danielle Slade posted photos of a trip she took to the Gulf last week, taking in Normanton, Burketown and Doomadgee.
She said she visited the Burketown State School which has 27 students from prep through to grade 6.
“Their big concern is keeping there numbers above 26 each year, if they fall to 26 or below they lose a teacher and it’s not until the attendee numbers are confirmed that the second teacher knows if they have a job for him/her for that year,” Ms Slade said.
“While Burketown is full of small town charm and a vibrate community, it’s very isolated so there needs to be job security for any teachers prepared to move there. The kids also deserve the stability and consistency of their teachers.”
She said housing was also another big issue.
“Hard to retain families when there isn’t enough houses, which means there is always going to be a struggle to maintain numbers at the school,” she said.
“Health care was another issue with residents often having to travel to Doomadgee and Mount Isa for some Health Services.”
She said issues for Doomadgee were a lack of housing, health care and facilities for families and children while Normanton was in a similar predicament with the high airfares out of Mount Isa and Cloncurry impacting on residents and businesses.
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Independent candidate Sarah Isaacs thanked her supporters
“I have meet many inspirational people and groups in this region and connected with many of you online,” she said.
“There is much work to do.”
Fellow independent Craig Scriven was talking about electricity, banks,insurance and flights.
He said shareholders were one of the biggest things that add to any corporate costs as corporations had to "act for the benefit of the share holders".
This is the reason why on the same day, a bank can inform the public that it will be cutting 6000 jobs over the next 2 years, and then in the same press release, announce a profit of five billion,” Mr Scriven said.
“Even if the government sets up its own ‘rural’ bank, it will still be governed by the same lending criteria, and like the government power industry, must work to the benefit of its shareholders.”
He said senate inquiries will have no effect unless a business plan is produced that doesn't affect their dividends.
“I put this forward at the forum last night and was met with so much negativity,” he said.
“I'm an ex business owner that held government contracts. It wasn't until a price was negotiated, not dictated to me, that a we could both move on to the benefit of all involved.”