General News
20 August, 2025
Special economic zone would boost North West: KAP
The Katters have thrown their support behind a special economic zone in the North West.
With Mount Isa now patiently waiting for news from Canberra about the fortunes of its copper smelter, the Katter’s Australian Party is pushing for the North West to become the nation’s first special economic zone.
Speaking in Mount Isa last week, KAP leader and Member for Traeger Robbie Katter, and his father, Member for Kennedy Bob Katter, said the time was right for Australia to explore special economic zones, which have had success in Europe.
“The time is now. There’s not just one thing that needs to be fixed in the North West; there’s four or five things at once that need to be fixed,” Robbie said.
“They’re not the standard issues that you have in an industry or a region.
“These are deep structural issues that would, if addressed, result in a real period of prosperity for the country and the region.
“The consequences of dealing with this basket of issues that are here is of national significance.
“Therefore, it requires all things dealt with at once and that’s never going to be done through a conventional sort of peer-to-peer political solution.
“It needs to be done as a strategy, as part of a broader strategy, and that needs to be a special economic zone where you look at tax incentives, you look at gas reserve policy, you look at infrastructure requirements like CopperString and common-user infrastructure.
“There’s a basket of things that need to be done and if they’re done, the good news for the government is they’ll be reaping a lot of benefit.
“The bad news is if they don’t do that, if they don’t adopt a special economic zone, then things could go south pretty rapidly.”
Bob said giving the North West an opportunity to stand on its own two feet without the red tape of Canberra and Brisbane would result in a nett benefit to the country and state.
“We know what we’re doing out here but we need people to get out of the way,” he said.
The Katters have been long-time advocates for North Queensland to become a new state, but Robbie said a special economic zone would go a long way to alleviating some of the problems that were sparking the push to divide Queensland.
However, the state MP said bureaucrats would have to get on board or get out of the way.
“The cancer of government now is that it works from a bottom-up approach,” Robbie said.
“They wait to be told what to do by departments and they won’t move. They’ll be in a state of paralysis if they don’t get advice from the departments.
“They’ve become accustomed to that in our governing centres where we require the exact opposite in the North West.
“We require leadership and some aspirational vision from the MPs to do the job.
“That’s precisely what built this region in the first place.
“If governments continue to do what they’ve done, then we can look forward to a future state of paralysis from where we are now.
“But we invite them in to just listen to what the industry is saying to them and the people on the ground here. And they could do really well, you know, we can look for a future of bountiful prosperity.”