Rude dude taking Oz by storm

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BRISBANE -- A strange political beast is stirring in Australia's north and next month it may well step out of its cage.

A cowboy-hat-wearing north Queenslander known variously as Robert Carl Katter, the Kat in the Hat or simply Mad Bob is looking to turn the northern state of Queensland on its head in the state poll scheduled for March 24.

Like a crazed political deity, Katter has created a new party in his own image. To those inside the entrenched system, however, it's not so much a glorious celestial vision of heaven as a hideous glimpse of hell.

Katter's Australia Party is fielding candidates in almost every one of the 89 seats in the state's unicameral parliament dominated, like every other, by two entrenched political powers -- Labour and the Conservatives.

The outspoken North Queenslander who believes boys should be taught how to shoot rifles and calls his grandkids' tree house the "sniper's nest'' is Australia's most colourful and intriguing politician.

He's an Independent member of the federal parliament holding his own rural far-northern seat of Kennedy with a cult-like following that can sometimes give him more than 75 per cent of the vote.

Katter is a blunt-talking,' huntin,' fishin,' gun-totin', observant Catholic of Maronite Lebanese descent who may, or may not, be a distant relative of the great poet Khalil Gibran.

Socially he is deeply conservative; economically he is a possibly dangerous radical.

He wants some form of tariff protection returned for farmers, believes the state should retain ownership of vital infrastructure such as telecommunications and wants to tear down the monopolies of giant supermarket chains to protect small shop owners in regional towns.

On other issues including indigenous policy, the man who calls many northern Aborigines close friends can leap from bleeding-heart liberal to hard-headed redneck quicker than a cowboy can dodge a charging bull at those western rodeos so dear to his heart.

For Canadians looking for a framework of reference, you might try imagining a rural-based U.S. Tea Party enthusiast or a slightly less sophisticated version of Preston Manning.

On homosexuality Manning reportedly said: "Homosexuality is destructive to the individual, and in the long run, society".

On the same issue Katter said:

"I'd walk to Bourke backwards if the poof population of North Queensland is any more than 0.001 per cent.''

Katter is, in short, a wilful eccentric who would drive an image consultant to tears of frustration. In the current climate of electoral cynicism, however, where endless lines of cloned politicians emerge from democracy's sausage factories, that's just another arrow in his quiver.

Katter is plotting no less than the total overthrow of Queensland's Labour government but won't achieve his aim. What he will do, many pundits now agree, is establish a considerable beachhead in the Queensland parliament by winning between four and six seats and from there begin plotting his empire's expansion into another receptive state, such as Western Australia.

It all sounds fantastic, but last year, Katter, along with three other Independents held the entire nation to ransom as they forced the two major parties in a minority parliament to dance to their tune.

In his late 60s and in robust health, Katter is clearly determined to make his life's legacy a third force in Australian politics and Queensland provides the perfect petri dish to culture his precious new cells.

In 1998, the northern state stunned the rest of the nation by electing 11 members of the now largely defunct One Nation Party into the state parliament.

One Nation was the manifestation of a sometimes barely articulate rage against mainstream politics, the media and even, oddly enough, perceived indigenous advantages at the expense of whites.

It ate itself alive in the course of a few short years amid adolescent infighting and political naiveté. But Katter, a far more cunning political operative than One Nation's founder Pauline Hanson, has nearly four decades of experience in both state and federal parliaments.

Yet, his greatest weapon in the state campaign, which officially starts this weekend, is not his political smarts but his personality. Put simply, he's likable. Even his apparent homophobia is tempered by an insistence his famous "poof'' comment was only a joke.

Mainstream politicians of both sides, aghast at the policy havoc he could wreak on the nation, find it difficult to resist his backwoods charm. Members of the public can break into spontaneous applause at the mere sight of him.

Katter is quietly confident this decentralized state, where isolated families still live out their lives amid the rural dirt roads and a university education equates with Communist leanings, that the One Nation vote is still swirling around like a Queensland cyclone trying to make landfall.

But Katter doesn't rely on meteorological imagery when he wants to conjure it up.

Instead he calls it "the Beast" On March 24, he intends letting the Beast out of its cage.

Michael Madigan is the Free Press correspondent in Australia. He writes mostly about politics for the Brisbane-based Courier Mail.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 17, 2012 A12