Strewth: Close encounters
Bob Katter refuses to let Pauline Hanson take care of the cane toads.
If Pauline Hanson is a flash of lightning, Bob Katter is surely the thunder that follows. Following the One Nation leader’s bright spark of a suggestion on Wednesday that welfare recipients be put to work as
toad-killers, Katter rumbled in yesterday to up the ante. It started with a Katter’s Australian Party announcement, which arrived in inboxes in a blaze of red letters and big fonts: “Wanted dead or alive — KAP reigniting 10-year fight for low-powered air rifles in the war against cane toads and a 40 cent bounty — providing ‘pocket money’ for kids in the duty to protect Australia — our natural wonderland.” This dash-rich release promised a press conference at which Katter would be accompanied by eight dead toads (no, we don’t know the significance of the number). This proved to be a bit of a movable feast, the start time changing and then the venue — one can only wonder whether Katter was having trouble rounding up the toads, or his staff having trouble rounding up him — but Katter delivered. Unlike Hanson, who donned gloves on TV but struggled to catch a toad, Katter turned up with his promised eight ex-amphibians, disgorging their carcasses from a plastic bag. Near them lay a small garden trowel, which lent the scene an air of slightly menacing whimsy.
Of the toad kind
Proposals for unleashing air rifles in a toad war have been made before, not least in 2015 by Katter’s Australian Party MP Shane Knuth. Our sister paper The Cairns Post parked the headline “Gun law change toadally won’t work” over a story that contained alarming gems such as: “Noel Ryan from the Cairns Target Shooting Club said amending the current laws was a recipe for disaster. ‘It would leave those changes in the law open to abuse,’ he said. ‘Whoever’s got a gun could discharge it around the town, and claim they were shooting at cane toads.’ ’’ But it is worth picturing that scenario, and pondering just what a perfect fit that story’s subhead was: “Cairns gone wild”.
On wings, no prayers
But even as Katter addressed the media yesterday with that warty pile of death at his feet, it was gentle compared to his Krakatoa-like efforts on flying foxes. Here’s Katman on the topic of the “filthy menace” in parliament’s Federation Chamber last year: “Let me take you to the coalface. Let me rub the faces of some of the stupid people that are elected to represent the people of Australia in this place in the gutter of their own creation … We want to get rid of them, and it is very simple: you put a very loud noise under all the trees, and they go away. I would prefer them to catch lead poisoning, but anyway.” (Liberal MP Andrew Hastie was in the chair at the time, mesmerised.) But even this was small beer compared to this earlier Katter monologue (or Katterlogue, if you will): “We are here, in spite of imbeciles like the person that made a decision to waste nearly $3 million of taxpayers’ money tracking flying foxes. I don’t want to track them; I want to get rid of them! Listen, you half-witted rabbit, don’t you realise that you are the one who is upsetting nature, not me! It is the natural proclivity of man to hunt flying foxes … My forebears, we blackfellas, we tracked them all right! And then bloody got at them with a spear, throwing off a woomera and a boomerang, which is actually a weapon that is perfectly sculptured and designed to take out a flying fox — and that was one of the major reasons for that design and rather a brilliant piece of engineering in its own way, the old boomerang.” (We stick to this observation we made at the time: “Containing that between a set of quote marks is a bit like trying to fence in a rhinoceros with rice paper, but it’s worth a shot.”) Then of course there’s his antipathy towards crocodiles. Katter’s dream vision is presumably of a dead toad inside a dead bat inside a dead croc — a bit like a turducken. But we’re just guessing. Now we’ll have to see if Fraser Anning offers his own toad solution.
Is he really a Katter?
It’s probably worth reiterating there is another Katter style, as per this announcement yesterday: “State KAP leader and Traeger MP Robbie Katter has welcomed the news that Karumba will be permanently included on the state government’s regulated Gulf air service route. In late September Mr Katter wrote to Department of Transport and Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey, backing the calls of the Karumba community …” Sometimes, sadly, the apple flies well clear of the tree.
August organ action
For reasons not immediately clear, cane toads did not score a mention during Chris Bowen’s presser — though we’re sure the opposition Treasury spokesman would relish the topic. But it did feature our colleague Richard Ferguson setting off some commendable cross-promotion. Ferguson: “Mr Bowen, your op-ed in The Australian today is a very sharp rebuke of the Treasurer …”
Bowen: “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Ferguson: “Does he not have a point that these more than a million Australians who, according to Treasury analysis, will end up in the highest tax bracket over six years if your policies are enacted …”
Bowen: “As I make the point in the article, which you are kind enough to refer to in The Australian today …”
Five stars, Fergo.
strewth@theaustralian.com.au