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Q&A recap: Bob Katter slams Liberal Party leadership coup

Katter describes those involved in the Liberal Party leadership coup as a “bunch of careerists competing for class captain”.

Elias Visontay
Bob Katter appears on the ABC's Q&A.
Bob Katter appears on the ABC's Q&A.
4 min read
12:29AMAugust 28, 2018.
Updated 1:01AMAugust 28, 2018

Bob Katter has described politicians involved in the Liberal Party leadership challenge as a “bunch of careerists competing for class captain”, and defended his support of Fraser Anning’s mention of a “final solution” in his maiden speech.

The leader of Katter’s Australia Party made the comments during a special broadcast of ABC’s Q&A from Mackay, with the Liberal leadership challenge, immigration, energy and coal dominating the discussion.

Also on the panel was One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, former Greens senator Larissa Waters, Labor MP Cathy O’Toole and Nationals MP George Christensen.

Speaking on the Liberal Party’s imminent loss of a majority in the lower house after Malcolm Turnbull announced he would be quitting politics this week — triggering a by election in the former prime minister’s seat of Wentworth — Katter said it would mean politicians of smaller parties would soon have greater power.

“I’ll have a lot more power and I’ll exercise that for the people of North Queensland fairly ruthlessly, I can tell you,” he said.

Throughout the night, comments by all panellists about federal and state governments neglecting Central and North Queensland were met with applause from the audience.

Commenting on the previous week in federal politics, Cathy O’Toole described the Coalition’s behaviour as “absolutely appalling”.

“I have never in my life seen such a dereliction of duty as we saw last week.

“Since when do you just pack up and go home because you can’t get your own way? Since when? In the workforce you get sacked”O’Toole said to applause from the audience.

IMMIGRATION

Asked by an audience member how he reconciled his family’s Lebanese heritage with his support for Fraser Anning’s controversial speech, Katter rejected that Anning had called for a “White Australia”.

“Whether a person has this religion or that religion is utterly irrelevant. The policy of our party has been very clear.

“If you can find anywhere in that speech where he advocated White Australia policy I’d be very curious to find out where it is.”

On the topic, Pauline Hanson reiterated her support for a “moratorium” on Muslim immigration.

“Muslims have a different ideology and belief and assimilating into our society. We have a problem across the world with Muslims who are not prepared to integrate into our society.”

“I’m not out to offend people, I’m here to protect Australians. That we feel safe on our streets and don’t want the problems here.”

George Christensen said that immigration policy “shouldn’t be based on race or religion” but that there are “people with genuine concerns about cultures that come into this country that might be against our own culture and against our own values.”

“That’s quite legitimate. That’s not racist to say. There’s concerns about the level of immigration in this country, putting pressure on capital cities”.

Larissa Waters called the debate “incredibly divisive and unhelpful, as well as a very clever distraction mechanism, to be fanning such hatred in this community.”

ENERGY AND ADANI

Audience questions on a shortage of energy providers in regional Queensland and on concerns of the proposed Adani mine’s impact on the Great Barrier Reef prompted a discussion on energy prices and the future of coal.

George Christensen said long term affordability and reliability of power “meant coal-fired” solutions, and said attacks on the planned Adani project were “nonsense”.

“We’ve seen a litany of lies on this project … It’s knocking our economy and job opportunity for the north. There are real people employed by Adani right now.”

Larissa Waters also acknowledged the “need to bring down power prices”.

“We can do it with clean energy. It won’t cook the Reef, it will help us address climate change, and it’s going to work.

“We now have clean baseload power that can bring down prices and solve the issues.

Bob Katter called for the renationalisation and regulation of the energy market as a path to lower prices.

“I was the Minister when we had the cheapest electricity in the world … There was no argument to put it up. We had reserved resource policies.”

Katter blamed privatisation as contributing to increasing energy costs, and said to “forget about any other solution” than to “renationalise it”.

Asked what Labor’s position was on the Adani mine, Cathy O’Toole said: “It’s not Government’s business to get involved in telling business what they can and can’t do.

“We have legislation and they must meet it. Then they must get their own finances.”

Other topics discussed on the during the broadcast from Mackay included rising crocodile numbers in the region and whether the panellists supported culling as a solution.

George Christensen said: “We should consider it … when you’ve got crocs swimming up on to beaches where young nippers train.

“I’m not talking about wholesale slaughter of crocodiles, I’m talking about a managed cull. Just cull them back from urban areas. It’s quite simple.”

Bob Katter said: “We North Queenslanders want our waterways back. They’ve been taken off us. We want them back. That’s all we’re saying. We’re saying removal.”

The final question of the show asked panellists whether they supported a separate state for Central and North Queensland, with only Katter and Christensen being in favour of the idea.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/broadcast/qa-recap-bob-katter-slams-liberal-party-leadership-coup/news-story/d46c6204377d31652794dca9732d246d