Bob Katter’s eccentricities are no longer a joke

2 weeks ago 3

Editorial

September 2, 2025 — 4.58pm

Sneer at Bob Katter at your peril. A man of increasingly ugly eccentricities, he cares not a jot because he is the most ardent supporter of his own cause.

Bob Katter confronts Nine News reporter Josh Bavas in Brisbane.

Such loyalty led to him refusing his chance to pork-barrel his tragically neglected Far North Queensland electorate when he rejected Julia Gillard’s blandishments to form government. Unable to buck his father’s Country Party DNA, Katter’s two fellow National Party MPs-turned-independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott supported Labor, and their electorates were showered with hospitals and other multimillion-dollar projects.

The turncoats went down in the subsequent 2013 federal election. Katter was re-elected.

His family has been self-serving the electorate of Kennedy since 1966. A political dynasty that knows the names of every voter and their dogs, Katter himself has forged a long career playing the country bumpkin to annoy city folk and amuse voters back home.

But tolerance has surely run out for his one-man band.

Katter has been anti-immigration, anti-crocodile, pro-gun, anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rights since his days as a junior minister in the corrupt Joh Bjelke-Petersen government of the 1980s, before inheriting Kennedy from his father in 1993. But after his latest foray into ugly politics he has harvested headlines around Australia for threatening to punch a respected journalist, Josh Bavas, who reports for Nine, the owner of this masthead, while rabble-rousing for Sunday’s anti-immigration march. Amid a torrent of bipartisan criticism, he shamefully even said he should have gone harder.

The Herald’s Paul Sakkal reports Katter faces possible suspension after being referred to parliament’s powerful new watchdog, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission.

Katter learnt profile is the key to political popularity. He was briefly well-known for campus attacks on long hair during The Beatles’ 1964 Australian tour and a decade later parlayed Brisbane fame and family ties in the deep north to become a state MP. As the only university graduate in cabinet, Bjelke-Petersen buried him under ministries looking after Queensland’s poor and First Nations.

But in a glimpse of the Donald Trump to come, Bjelke-Petersen also taught Katter that stunts distract voters fed on the sins of big-city elites. When Labor took control in Brisbane, Katter fled state parliament and, after his father retired, won Kennedy. A born survivor, he astutely deserted the Queensland Nationals to stand as an independent when Pauline Hanson sashayed into his heartland in 2001. He has lingered on the political fringe ever since.

However, in reality Katter is a living non sequitur whose yokel shtick can prompt derision – “all hat, no cattle”, “Mad Katter” – yet strangely beguiles political commentators.

But even Katter is bored with his persona. The crossbencher has played no meaningful role for years and hardly bothers to attend parliament some days.

That Kennedy voters continue to support such failure is perplexing but Katter’s latest escapade suggests he has clearly lost sight of what the rest of Australia expects. Threatening violence at work as though it were just another day at the office is unworthy of the office he holds. Any other Australian worker would be expected to resign or be fired. Katter is no different.