Fraser Anning crosses new boss Bob Katter on first day in party

One Nation defector Fraser Anning has marked his first day with Katter’s Australian Party with a stunning policy decision.

Bob Katter with his new recruit, Fraser Anning, in Cairns today. Picture: AAP

One Nation defector Fraser Anning has crossed his new boss, Bob Katter, by promising the government he would champion its controversial ­company tax cuts in defiance of Mr Katter’s strongly stated ­opposition.

Senator Anning marked his first day with Katter’s Australian Party by calling on Malcolm Turnbull to reduce the corporate tax rate by more and sooner, saying he would lobby his colleagues on the Senate crossbenches to give the Prime Minister a win.

Senator Anning’s His full-throated support for the plan to reduce company tax from 30 per cent to 25 per cent over 10 years flies in the face of Mr Katter’s insistence it would line the pockets of the “spivs, dilettantes and boardroom mannequins”.

After welcoming Senator Anning to the KAP team, Mr Katter said: “I am tenaciously opposed to these tax cuts. Most of the corporations in Australia are foreign, for starters. So all you are doing is giving a golden handshake to foreign people.”

Senator Anning’s offer to go in to bat for the tax cuts will encourage the government after One Nation senator Brian Burston broke with party leader Pauline Hanson last week, and vowed to stick to the agreement she had disavowed to vote for the $35.6 billion package.

Senator Anning, 68, quit One Nation on the day he was sworn in to parliament as the replacement for Senator Hanson’s Queensland running mate Malcolm Roberts, a casualty of the dual-citizenship fiasco. Joining KAP, which is represented by Mr Katter in the house and three MPs in the Queensland parliament, would give him more “clout” than as an independent on the crossbench, he said. “Joining forces hopefully means we can get more of the big stuff done for regional Queensland.”

Mr Turnbull’s key numbers man in the Senate, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, tracked down Senator Anning in north Queensland on Tuesday to lock in his support for the tax package.

Senator Anning went further, telling Senator Cormann that he would also lobby no-voters on the crossbenches such as the three former Nick Xenophon Team members. With Senator Burston’s support, the government is still four votes short of what it needs to secure passage of the legislation through the upper house.

Asked if this were achievable, Senator Anning said: “I hope so. It’s very important to Australia. You hear all this about the big guys just running away with the money. That’s not what … will happen. They will invest more and they will hire more people, so I’m really hoping that Mathias can get his numbers.”

Mr Katter said he would do all he could to sink the company tax cuts. “I don’t think they will be successful and I will certainly be exercising my right to advise that small number of people I have some influence with to go the other way,” he told The Australian.

Nevertheless, he said, Senator Anning had every right to go his own way. “The concept that you have to agree with everything, that is repugnant to me … the problem is not whether I’m right or they’re right,” he said. “The problem is if you have the situation where everyone agrees because they are all in the same party — that’s the destruction of democracy.”

Senator Anning said the only problem with Mr Turnbull’s proposal was that the proposed 25 per cent rate had been undercut by the US and the staged introduction would take a decade under the government’s timetable.