Stirrer Bob Katter may be frustrated

NOT since Pauline Hanson shook up politics in Queensland has an outsider promised to have such an impact on a state election.

NOT since Pauline Hanson shook up politics in Queensland has an outsider promised to have such an impact on a state election.

Enter Bob Katter, the wildcard of this campaign.

Never mind that he is not actually running for a seat in state parliament. As his haphazard attendance of federal parliament shows, Mr Katter, 66, has never been one to stand on formality.

He insists his start-up Katter's Australian Party will contest all 89 state seats in Queensland, and give the major parties a run for their money on polling day.

As was the case with the debut of Hanson's One Nation back in 1998, it's impossible to say credibly whether Mr Katter is speaking through his Akubra.

Newspoll hasn't specifically polled on Mr Katter. The Australian's final quarterly Newspoll last year collectively gave independents and minor parties, excluding the Greens, 15 per cent of the base vote.

A Galaxy poll last September drilled down into voting intentions and found that 23 per cent of voters were "likely" to support Katter's Australian Party, invoking the result One Nation achieved at Ms Hanson's height in 1998. However, this finding needs to be treated cautiously: respondents did not volunteer the information until asked specifically whether they would consider voting for a KAP candidate.

Still, there's no doubt Mr Katter strikes a chord with regional voters, especially in his home state. He polled an astonishing 68 per cent of the vote after preferences in his northwest Queensland seat of Kennedy at the 2010 federal election. Except for three years in the early 1990s, Kennedy has been Katter country, since his late father, Bob Katter Sr, won it for the then Country Party in 1966.

Outspoken, idiosyncratic but by no means anyone's fool, Mr Katter has revelled in the limelight of the hung parliament in Canberra, and the access that has allowed him to push pet interests.

He has harnessed community anger towards coal-seam gas exploration on prime agricultural land and is campaigning for a 12-month moratorium on all proposed and new CSG projects, as well as a provision for farms to be exempt from mining activity.

Mr Katter is against the sale of state assets and has vowed to break up the supermarket duopoly of Woolworths and Coles.

He also wants to remove restrictions from pastimes such as hunting, shooting, fishing and boating and says vacant state land should be accessible by Queenslanders, rather than locked up.

His son, Robbie, a Mount Isa-based property valuer, is set to follow in his bootsteps into politics for KAP.

He is considered one of its better prospects, in the state seat of Mount Isa, held by the ALP.

Former test cricketer Carl Rackemann is also a chance for KAP in Joh Bjelke-Petersen's old seat of Nanango, northwest of Brisbane, being vacated by retiring independent Dorothy Pratt.

Liberal National Party defector Shane Knuth may hang on to his seat of Dalrymple, west of Townsville, though the LNP believes it has his measure.

Talk of a 98-esque boon result for Mr Katter's party, however, would seem to be overblown.

Ms Hanson was able to capitalise on both major parties being on the nose with Queensland voters to secure 22 per cent of the vote at the state poll, putting 11 MPs into parliament. The strength of the LNP under Campbell Newman suggests history won't readily repeat for Mr Katter.