If you listen to Robbie Katter, there is a “deep divide” separating Queensland’s tropical north from the home of power in the state’s south-east.
The maverick Queensland MP, son of long-serving federal independent Bob Katter, told reporters this week there are “three big issues” currently troubling his constituents: “Crime, coal, crocs.”
Katter was in his element as the state’s parliament descended on Cairns for regional sitting week, receiving warm greetings from locals and anti-crime campaigners.
The regional vote is vital in Australia’s most decentralised state, which is why premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her team arrived armed with a catalogue of funding announcements aimed at bursting through the perceived “Brisbane bubble”.
But it was the first of Katter’s three Cs – crime – that consistently thwarted the government’s agenda.
Kicking off the week with a press conference to announce $16m in funding to expand the Great Barrier Reef International Marine College, Palaszczuk said she’d answer questions about “local issues” first – a wink and a nod to the Cairns journalists the government wined and dined this week.
But instead of responding to the government’s talking points, most reporters grilled her about crime, asking about plans to build a youth detention centre in Cairns and an incident involving vigilante behaviour in Rockhampton.
On Tuesday the police minister, Mark Ryan, announced a massive $90m recruitment drive for officers but had his press conference hijacked by an anti-crime campaigner who invited him to a protest and asked a series of rambling questions.
On Wednesday, MPs cried and hugged as they passed the path to treaty bill but the historic legislation was still largely overshadowed by the Liberal National party and protesters circling back to youth crime.
That morning, opposition leader David Crisafulli invited the media to breakfast at the home of a woman who claimed she was the victim of a home invasion. Crisafulli served sausage sandwiches at the makeshift “crime forum”, attended by Cairns LNP candidate Yolonde Entsch – the wife of federal member Warren – and Currumbin MP Laura Gerber.
Cradling a baby in her arms, the woman spoke of her husband being attacked while she hid in the bedroom with her four children. Positioned directly behind her, but still in the camera shot, Crisafulli frowned sympathetically and shook his head as she told her story.
Robbie Katter called this week as he saw it, describing regional parliament as “window dressing” and renewing his longstanding call for self-determination for northern Queensland.
“There’s a large chasm developing,” he told reporters. “There is a deep divide between the values of people in the north and in the south and as evidenced by the policies that we get run over us.”
The premier brushed off Katter’s calls, saying “Queensland is best when we are united and we are one”.
“That is one of the main reasons that I said that we would be bringing the parliament to Cairns and to the far north, so we can engage directly,” she told parliament.
But Dr Maxine Newlands, a political scientist at Townsville’s James Cook University, doubted the efficacy of regional sitting week, saying their messaging is not “cutting through”.
“I’ve been up just over 11 years now and it’s the same conversation,” Newlands says. “It’s either the narrative of the south-east corner: ‘They get all the money but we do all the work’. Or it’s about Canberra: ‘They don’t know what’s happening in north Queensland, they don’t live here’.”
Newlands says the LNP have an uphill battle to win next year’s election, with many Queenslanders now habitualised to voting for Labor at a state level and the coalition in federal elections.
Both major parties could take notes from the Katters, she says, whose “gloves off” championing of their constituents has resulted in a tight grip over their territory.
Bob Katter has held the sweeping federal seat of Kennedy – which in land size makes up just under a third of Queensland – since 1993. Robbie, now the leader of Katter’s Australia party, has held the very safe state seat of Traeger since 2012.
“They know what they’re doing when it comes to north Queensland, that’s for sure,” Newlands says.
“The longer we hear crime being covered and ‘the Queensland Government aren’t doing enough’ that will really resonate with voters.
“The regions and crime are probably going to be a bit of a big ticket item when it comes to winning the 2024 election.”
