Robert the Third was born to be King of the North.
Robbie Katter’s family have represented voters in Queensland’s wild north since 1966 – 11 years before Robbie was born – when his grandfather, Bob Katter Sr, joined the Country party and won the seat of Kennedy.
The enigmatic Bob Katter Jr has held the same federal seat since 1993.
In their shadow, Robbie has taken the family business and embarked on an ambitious expansion – he now leads Katter’s Australian party (KAP), the dominant conservative political force north of the tropic of capricorn, which holds four seats in the Queensland parliament and is targeting more.
But Robbie says he wants to be a kingmaker, not the king.
“Personally I’d almost prefer to have a balance of power than taking government,” he told Guardian Australia, mid-campaign. “Because I can stay narrowly focused on the plethora of issues we already have up here in north Queensland, and not have to worry about problems of all of Queensland.”
With polls pointing to a Liberal National party victory, Robbie and the KAP are arguably the opposition’s biggest roadblock to forming a majority government. The LNP holds no seats north of Burdekin and its path to victory relies on gains in Queensland’s equivalent of the political wild west.
The Townsville-based political scientist Maxine Newlands says the party is trying to create a sense it is “a voice for north Queenslanders in parliament”, in contrast to the two major parties, which KAP MPs often refer to derisively as “the Brisbane-based parties”.
Newlands says KAP has also been careful in its choice of candidates, and seats. It has picked 11, all of them in north Queensland, all of them well-known locals. Most aren’t typical politicians.
Enter Michael Pugh. No normal candidate would openly admit to convictions for theft and break and enter while running on an anti-crime platform.
“Yes, I did get into a bit of strife when I was in my early 20s, many, many years ago, but I’ve found that has helped me to be more relatable to the electorate,” Pugh tells the Guardian.
That “strife” was in 2005, when he confessed to breaking into a business; two years later, he admitted to breaking into a house, threatening its occupants and stealing.
He says being given an 18-month suspended sentence was a “circuit breaker moment” and wants young criminals to have the same opportunity, under the party’s relocation sentencing policy.
Pugh says his past has also helped him be “more relatable to the electorate”.
KAP is hopeful Pugh, who is well known to residents of his local area, will snag the Townsville electorate of Mundingburra and become the party’s fifth MP in the Queensland parliament.
The race for the bellwether seat is expected to become a three-cornered contest with Labor’s vote in the north looking very shaky.
Newlands thinks Pugh’s background will actually win him votes as people will see him as “a bit of a larrikin” and “one of us”. That seems to be what the electorate thinks of the party overall and it’s a view that has served it well in recent years.
Crocodiles, insurance and abortion
Katter’s Australian party does not fit neatly into the right or leftwing box.
Last term its MPs introduced bills on rural issues such as repealing protection of the Great Barrier Reef, and crocodile control – the latter a long-term priority. The party’s founder famously erroneously claimed a person is torn to pieces by one in north Queensland every three months.
They also sponsored a bill establishing a “castle doctrine”, which would allow homeowners to gun down intruders with less fear of prosecution, and are now campaigning to “bring back the smack”, permitting corporal punishment by parents.
But the party has also called for the re-establishment of a state insurance company, and abolition on stamp duty only for north Queenslanders. They want to make it easier for Indigenous Australians to get a blue card, so they can exercise traditional parenting models. The party is often friendly with Labor; for the first time ever KAP has the LNP above the ALP on their how-to-vote cards, but only because they think it will help them win.
The deputy leader, Nick Dametto, told the Townsville Bulletin last month that a vote on splitting Queensland and creating a new state in the north would be on the negotiating table, if their numbers were needed in a hung parliament.
The party leaders’ top priorities are, mostly, parochial.
Except, of course, abortion.
Katter has largely hijacked the campaign with his intention to revive a “babies born alive” bill that would mandate life-saving interventions on the extremely rare occasions where an unviable foetus is born alive.
Next parliament KAP will introduce a bill amending the termination of pregnancy act, seen by many as a signal by the anti-abortion party and an attempt to wedge the opposition.
The prospect of a conscience vote has put significant focus on the personal views of LNP MPs and candidates. Many have previously been on record opposing abortion rights; none has been willing to answer questions about those views during the campaign.
Despite all the noise around abortion, Katter says his personal priority is to save his “dying” electorate.
“My electorate is dying, quite literally. We’ve got 1,200 jobs going from a town of 18,000 people in Mount Isa, which is the biggest centre in my electorate; 1,200 jobs,” he says.
He wants the government, whoever that may be after Saturday, to build a new tunnel under the mountains west of Cairns, to unlock more land for the city to grow at Mareeba.
Katter says he personally would go further than a special tax exemption for the north, charging Queenslanders in the south-east a $100 levy to reduce insurance costs for the disaster-prone north.
The reason KAP has been successful where others have failed is simple. “Values,” Katter says.
“From day one, we knew we’d exclude ourselves from some voting markets, and we might constrain our growth.
“So some of the things we represent mightn’t appeal to big city areas, but when candidates become elected members, when they come into the fold, they know what the expectations are.
“We are playing for keeps; the starting point for us is survival.”
