The Sketch: setting a Katter among pigeons

Bob Katter in parliament. Picture Gary Ramage

There are surely some who come to question time in the hope of a bit of rough stuff, a bit of hand-to-hand combat in the manner of the Ukrainian or South Korean parliament. For a few truculent seconds yesterday, it felt like the wish might finally be granted.

There was no inkling of the strife to come. Malcolm Turnbull was back on his rhetorical flights of fancy (werewolves, sunbeams, economic fantasists) and bolstering the government’s brand new energy policy by belting Labor over the head with the credentials of Energy Security Board chairwoman Kerry Schott. Unhelpfully, Labor’s energy spokesman Mark Butler quoted something Schott had said on Lateline about the policy’s effect on bills: “I don’t think anybody can guarantee a price reduction.”

As Tony Abbott might have put it, Schott happens.

Then Bob Katter wafted in to ask his question. Or as it proved, began to ask his question. Alas, he’d arrived for a sprint prepared for a marathon, and his microphone pitilessly cut him off mid-sentence. “The Member for Kennedy will resume his seat,” Speaker Tony Smith said mildly. “We will take that as a 45-second statement.”

Hansard renders what followed rather mildly as “Mr Katter interjecting”. More accurately, he simmered, he steamed. He bellowed angrily about how he’d been shut up.

Smith often gives the impression of having a high pain threshold, but it was suddenly clear he’d Had Quite Enough. “The Member for Kennedy will not reflect on the chair,” he began. “The Member for Kennedy, unlike members of the opposition, has additional time to ask a question. Special rules have been put in place to allow 45 seconds, and they were put in place principally for him. There were 45 seconds of quotes and statements without a question. This is question time, and I’m not going to be lectured by the Member for Kennedy.”

But Katter was not done and continued to protest in highest dudgeon. Traditionally, Katter is humoured by other MPs, but this gave way to grumpy murmurs of “sit down”. Still he stood and protested. But just when it seemed he might charge the Speaker’s chair, he huffed crossly out the door.

It all had a discombobulating effect, not least on the PM.

“They left us a train wreck,” he later said of Labor. “We’ve turned it around.” Which raises that most timeless of questions: how the hell would that work?

But it fell to Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester to deliver the icing: “I can tell you one thing we can guarantee: blue-collar workers will lose their jobs under this government … ah, under this opposition’s plan.” The fun ended soon after.