The Register of Members’ Interests — where MPs disclose any gifts, investments, events they’ve attended and allowed the taxpayer to foot the bill, and so on — is a crucial source of information, quietly revealing some of the opaque networks that help power operate as it does in this country.
To pick a handful of examples, it’s thanks to the register that we know, say, the high proportion of landlords or investors in price-gouging supermarkets among the people tasked with improving housing affordability and easing the cost-of-living crisis. We also know who contributes to a politician’s lawsuit fund or who is granted access to the elite who drink and dine and wait for planes in Qantas’ Chairman’s Lounge.
That’s all well and good. But if you just want a general chat about what’s been going on lately, you should head to long-time independent member for Kennedy Bob Katter’s disclosures.
In an update earlier this month, Katter kept transparency advocates up to date with the kind of discursive and expansive detail of an elderly relative giving you a far more detailed answer than you wanted when you ask how they’ve been (look, it wouldn’t happen if you visited more often).
I have been working hard to go back into mining. Mount Isa mines announced its closure of its copper stream division some three years ago which would also close the fertiliser plant. Costing the economy of Nth Qld over $4 thousand million dollars a year and some four thousand direct and indirect jobs.
It is essential for myself and everyone to put their shoulder to the wheel to provide copper ore or any other metal development in the area to take place. My very extensive knowledge from when I was mining copper myself, such knowledge I still have, and I must disclose that there would be a benefit for myself.
We’ve previously looked into Katter’s, shall we say, conversational approach to the register, noting in August of last year his mixture of candour and reticence. He reports an interest “in mining — nothing definite at this stage, but I intend to take up old mining tenements discovered by myself prior to going into Parliament … but there are no specifics at this stage”, while making it clear he is in a relationship that values boundaries: asked about his wife’s investments, he simply states “she does not provide me with this information — regards this as personal business and I respect her wishes in these matters”.
