Bob Katter faces his own China crisis

While Bob Katter isn’t always the most coherent, CBD maintains that the 79-year-old “Father of the House” has earned the right to the occasional meandering anecdote in question time.

But there was nothing rambling about a series of questions the North Queenslander put in writing to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke last week about Chinese involvement in the Pacific. There were 15 in all, relatively succinct and to the point.

“Father of the House” Bob Katter has a keen interest in China.Credit: James Brickwood

All except for one question, where Katter asked whether the minister was “concerned about the growing presence of the Republic of China in our neighbouring countries, particularly in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands”.

We’re sure Katter meant the People’s Republic of China, and not the Republic of China, the official name for Taiwan. Nomenclature is a sensitive thing in that part of the world.

The man in the hat fessed up when reached by CBD on Tuesday.

“Good point! That’s a bad mistake on my part!” Katter said, before embarking on one of those folksy riffs about how locals in Cape York keep telling him about their fears of a Chinese invasion.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but it mightn’t sound ridiculous if you live on the tip of Cape York!” Katter said.

There was more, about “whitefellas from Sydney” selling off Cape York to “the Chinese”, before Bob decided we’d all had enough for now.

NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED

On Monday, Australia met Zali Burrows.

Australia, meet Zali Burrows.Credit: Edwina Pickles

The colourful criminal solicitor, known for representing the likes of bikie gangs and jailed fraudster Salim Mehajer, told the Federal Court that her latest client Bruce Lehrmann’s only shot at making money was by “going on OnlyFans, or something silly like that”.

Beyond the headline-bait reference to the adult website, Burrows described her client – who is seeking to appeal a defamation decision that found, to the civil standard, that he raped his then-colleague Brittany Higgins – as “the most hated man in Australia”.

We’ve heard that before. It was how Burrows described Lehrmann to this column, when contacted about her abrupt withdrawal from a conference run by men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt.

Burrows, who neither a defamation specialist nor a barrister, is the only lawyer working on Lehrmann’s team for the appeal. Nevertheless, she is persistent.

In 2011, Sydney law firm Macpherson Kelley acted for Burrows in a personal dispute. She would later sue the firm for professional negligence, claiming her solicitor failed to secure $12,239.83 ordered in her favour. When Burrows’ claim failed in 2020, the District Court ordered her to pay the firm $130,000 in costs. She unsuccessfully tried to appeal that decision in the NSW Court of Appeal. She then sought special leave to appeal to the High Court, also without success.

When the firm sought a bankruptcy order against Burrows, her attempts to have it thrown out were rejected by the Federal Court last year.

But the matter returned to the District Court in March (it’s been considered by seven different judges now) when Burrows tried to have the costs order thrown out, arguing that it was obtained by fraud or bad faith.

In dismissing the proceedings, District Court Judge Robert Weber SC described some of Burrows’ submissions as “verging on heretical,” because she argued for him not to follow binding decisions of the Court of Appeal.

“Her case is therefore doomed to fail,” his honour said.

Hardly a ringing endorsement. Lehrmann is probably hoping for better.

HEALTHY PROFITS

How good is the private health insurance caper?

On Tuesday, as the NSW government introduced legislation to force the big four private health insurers to pay their hospital bills in full, those companies and their lobbyists held a lavish annual knees-up at the $20,000-a-day Boronia Ballroom in the Intercontinental Sydney.

Key offenders in the long-running saga are BUPA, NIB, Medibank and HCF – the private health insurance sector’s big four companies. Their failure to pay the correct rate for single rooms in public hospitals has cost NSW taxpayers $700 million since 2019.

From the swanky surrounds of the opulent ballroom, Rachel David, chief executive of industry peak body Private Healthcare Australia threatened that the average premium would rise by $114 if private health companies were forced to pay their bills in the public hospital system.

Speaking from “Sydney’s premier destination for gala dinners”, David told attendees “the smallest increase to consumer costs can have dire far-reaching consequences”.

Like, for instance, to the fantastic bonuses paid to private health insurance fund executives?

Take NIB boss Mark Fitzgibbon, who spoke on Tuesday. His bonus this year $531,875. His total remuneration? $3,730,526. In 2023 Mark’s cash bonus was more than $700K.

If the name rings a bell, it might be from the time, back in 2019, when Mark (brother of former cabinet minister Joel Fitzgibbon) made headlines by calling for Medicare to be scrapped in favour of mandatory private health insurance.

As David and friends continue fighting the good fight for private insurers, those companies have been raking in massive profit – $2.2 billion in 2022-23 alone, up 110 per cent from the previous year.

Which makes all the whining coming from the Intercontinental about the terrible unfairness of it all seem just a little rich.

We just wonder if they paid their ballroom rate upfront.

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