Bob Katter thinks he is a failure

The longest serving politician in parliament is not going to quit until he helps our "Aboriginal brothers and sisters" and gets us more guns.

The longest serving politician in parliament is not going to quit until he helps our "Aboriginal brothers and sisters" and gets us more guns.

"If I were the father of the house I would have fathered the biggest pack of bastards ever born," Bob Katter muses, while munching on some freeze-dried mango, in his office inside Parliament House in Canberra.

It is an office he's been in since 1993, which makes him now the longest serving pollie within the new 47th parliament, earning him the title father of the house. The 77-year-old has worn many hats since taking the seat of Kennedy in north Queensland, which is bigger than some European countries. Over the years he's represented the diverse rural electorate that includes, cattle, crocs, cane farms and a number of Indigenous communities, as a National MP, he then became an Independent and now heads up his own Katter's Australian Party.

The former cattle farmer "got bored" in 1974 so entered politics as a 29-year-old and served in the Queensland parliament until he moved to the federal arena.

But so far, he's not proud of his tenure.

"I have a great sense of failure."

"I feel like it’s our responsibility to look after our fellow Australians and we should make the world a better place but the system seems to be rejecting people with conviction and determination."

He credits former prime minister Kevin Rudd and Peta Credlin, Tony Abbott's chief of staff, as exemplars of "great politicians".

Speaking about himself in the third person, Katter told The Oz:

"He's a bloke who destroyed the deputy premier of Queensland, then destroyed the premier of Queensland then destroyed the deputy PM, then destroyed the prime minister of Australia and he couldn’t get his black fella brother cousins a market garden."

Indigenous Australians have a special place in his heart and he finds it impossible to forget not being able to help some people from communities in his area permission to establish their own businesses - like market gardens and bus runs. Bureaucracy and tribal issues got in the way, he says.

"I wish there was something to be proud of. But I probably go to a funeral every three and a half weeks in remote communities in my area. I mustered cattle with them. Played football with them. Got into fights with them. They’re good mates of mine but there’s hardly anyone here over the age of 60. The life expectancy for them is in their 50s or 60s. For the rest of us, it’s in our 80s." 

While he wouldn’t be drawn on the government's plans to enshrine a Voice to parliament or the adoption of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, he's worried history may repeat itself.  

This issue is the closest he's come to losing his cool - legitimately (not just for the cameras) - in Canberra.

"The closest I ever came to punching someone in this place is when a journalist asked me about recognising Aboriginal people in the parliament. I said ‘Mate, people, even back then, were dying. One every three days from malnutrition. There were Indigenous MPs in parliament then, I don’t know what we’ve achieved for our people. We have achieved bloody nothing," he says.

Over the years he's courted controversy about a range of social issues - including his now viral contribution to the same-sex marriage debate.

He lives for the theatre of politics. All the world's a stage for Katter. But he may be a human Rubik's Cube -as you never really know where he's going to land on an issue.

His most recent "stunt" came during the election campaign when he spoke of giving boys guns.

"I thought that would have caused more outrage, but every bastard agreed with me so there was a sense of frustration," he says.

It's a platform he stands by today, even in the aftermath of what we saw in Uvalde in the US just days after the federal election back in May.

For him, it makes sense from a national security point of view as "we've got an Army that only has a three-day supply of fuel" and he also wants to build a missile fortress in case China or another foreign regime invades Australia.

"Every boy in Australia should get a combat rifle and it should be kept in their school armory or by the general army," he says.

"The logic behind it is thinking about what we want for our young people. I want our boys to be men, manly. That is an aspiration that every boy should have. You put a rifle in a boy’s hands he will become instantaneously patriotic. He’ll think 'I am capable of defending my country, I have a responsibility to defend my country'. 

You put a rifle in his hand and he’ll say ‘Gee whiz I’m empowered’," Katter says while fixing his magenta cashmere neck scarf. 

"I mean, just look at Russia and Ukraine - a guerrilla army is just a nightmare - a lot of those leaders would be second guessing going up against one.

"And, of course, the girls, if they want to have rifles, definitely, let them have them too. Of course."

His one regret over the last 30 years is the way he treated Julia Gillard.

During the heady days of the last Labor government in the 2010s, he was a king-making crossbencher who helped the ALP win office.

"With all my guile and cunning and to be able to destroy all those powerful people. They did terrible things. But not Julia Gillard. I really regret that we got rid of her but there was no way of getting the cattle industry re-opened to the Indonesian market whilst she was there. But I deeply regret it but I couldn’t see any other way that it could unfold," he says.

"I also felt Kevin [Rudd] should have been back in the saddle. But the people of Australia didn’t agree with me. Neither did the people of Kennedy. I almost got beaten in that election." 

@theoz.com.au

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