Letter to the Editor

The father of the political independence movement in Australia, the late Peter Andren MP, once remarked that the only questions to be asked in question time were those by the three Independent MPs at the time (including myself).

That is because question time – which was always intended as the time for local MPs to raise electorate issues – had become the puppet theatre that disgusts all Australians today, with the LNP/ALP MPs all mere ventriloquists for their party bosses’ political point-scoring games.

As a matter of principle, I refused to go to question time when I was in a major party and unable to raise matters crucial to the electorate.

Then I gained the freedom to put deadly questions with neither fear nor favour.

In 2012, after we asked the Treasurer of Australia to intervene in the rural debt crisis crippling farmers across the nation, the Treasurer and senior Ministers attended summits we convened with agriculturalists, businesses and bankers in Brisbane and North West Qld, and subsequently secured the $420m National Farm Finance Package.

And Mount Isa became one of the first locations in Australia to get a regional Headpsace youth mental health centre after the Prime Minister responded to our question, in 2011, on a crisis of First Australian youth taking their own lives, and sent the Minister to report back from our community summit.

Earlier this year, we used question time to ask the federal government about Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour’s $5.6m pay packet whilst Australia Post donated $2.8m to his brother’s Islamic museum.

Mr Fahour resigned a week later and the government ordered the independent remuneration tribunal to intervene over salaries.

Ask a silly question and you’ll get a silly answer, or ask no questions and you’ll get no lies.

No wonder the major parties (and their local mouthpieces) hate us at Katter’s Australian Party.

Hon Bob Katter MP,
Federal Member for Kennedy
Katter’s Australian Party