Bob Katter’s call to arm children: Gun lobby electoral donations revealed
Gun lobby groups fired massive donations into Bob Katter’s electoral war chest in the months leading up to his controversial calls to arm Australian schoolkids.
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GUN lobby groups fired massive donations into Bob Katter’s electoral war chest in the months leading up to his controversial calls to arm Australian schoolkids.
Electoral disclosure data reveal Katter’s Australian Party received $615,000 from various shooting organisations over the past decade.
Those contributions included a massive $330,000 last financial year alone.
The Firearms Dealers Association Queensland added $100,000 to the party coffers, the Shooters Union of Queensland donated $100,000, and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia’s Queensland branch tipped in $130,000.
The party’s only other donor in 2020-21 was Charters Towers Toyota.
Mr Katter caused a stir last week after calling for all high school students to be given rifles and training at armouries.
The radical plan to forge a pubescent militia was widely condemned, but the Kennedy MP would not back down.
He did not directly respond when asked whether the gun lobby donations had any impact on his recent support of loosening gun control laws.
However, he has been an outspoken proponent for shooters’ rights for decades – and long before last financial year’s steep donation surge.
“I most certainly hope the gun lobby is giving me some money because I am the greatest proponent of guns in Australia, and always have been,” he told the Cairns Post.
“My mind is conditioned to think about how we will defend ourselves because a relative of mine lost his life at Gallipoli and another member of the family died soon after release from Changi Prison.
“When I was in the militia, I was on 24-hour call up to go to war with Indonesia, a nation 30 times the size of Australia.
“Nearly every boy in Australia had a rifle when I was growing up.
“Maybe that’s because in World War II Australia was two weeks away from invasion and the federal government was going to give Australia away except for Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.”
Mr Katter has doubled down on his statements about the existential threat posed to Australia from the Russo-Ukrainian War and China’s steady creep across the Pacific.
“In 1938 Winston Churchill was called curmudgeon, he was called a dinosaur, a dangerous warmonger and irresponsible,” he said.
“In 1939 the UK public were on their bended knees begging him to take over the running of the country, but it was a little bit too late because he hadn’t been listened to and a war had emanated.”
In what might be a cheeky nod to the “lilypad left” he so frequently derides, Mr Katter made a statement that could almost be considered “woke”.
“Every boy should have a rifle stored in a school armoury, and they should be trained how to use it in the cadets,” he began.
“Girls too if they wish.”
Originally published as Bob Katter’s call to arm children: Gun lobby electoral donations revealed
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