General News
30 October, 2024
Robbie Katter left licking his wounds after election win
The MP still has a big margin in Traeger, but lost a chunk of his primary vote on Saturday.
Battered and bruised, Robbie Katter is counting the cost of the election as he contemplates a path forward without his party holding the balance of power in a new state parliament.
Politics is ruled by numbers and Katter’s Australia Party’s election figures, while not exactly a backward step, are not the great leap forward some had anticipated.
Mr Katter retained Traeger with a reduced primary vote – from 58.85 per cent in 2020 to 49.98 per cent in 2024 – and the party will still hold on to all of its seats, however KAP’s overall vote was down.
There has been a change of government, with the LNP taking the reins for only the third time in more than three decades, but a late fightback from Labor ensured that it was not a landslide victory.
The wave of protest votes favouring minor parties, such as KAP, did not eventuate.
In the weeks leading to Saturday’s election, Mr Katter had repeatedly been lauded as the next political kingmaker – the man who the major parties would be forced to seek support from – as numerous polls predicted the KAP could win more seats.
Instead, the KAP campaign became bogged down on two battle fronts.
Firstly, a daily media focus on Mr Katter’s views on abortion laws steamrolled almost any other policy message the party wanted to discuss.
The LNP also ran unrelenting attacks that accused KAP of doing backroom deals with Steven Miles – which so angered Mr Katter that on Saturday he sought legal advice in a bid to stop some LNP corflutes being displayed at election booths.
The disdain was clear during Mr Katter’s numerous election night interviews as he continued to confront these two issues repeatedly on live television.
When North West Weekly caught up with Mr Katter on the morning after the election, the zeal he had displayed during the campaign was well and truly sapped from his face.
Mr Katter believes the KAP fought a campaign focused on policy but was trounced by the “political games” of the major parties.
“I don’t think people were voting for the LNP, I think people were more just voting against Labor,” he said.
“It was just one of those elections where people wanted to get rid of the current government and small parties can find it hard to break through in that situation.
“If the campaign had just been run on policy, then I think we could have won in a lot of electorates.
“But it’s difficult for a small party to engage when there are just one-dimensional attacks being made on you.
“It really riles me up when they (major parties) use dirty tactics and cheap memes – when they are telling outright lies and using their big party machines to push it.
“David Crisafulli might have got over the line in the end, but he hardly covered himself in glory.
“I am ambivalent about him becoming Premier – I will put our ideas on the table and try to work constructively but the tail end of their (LNP) campaign was so poor, we will have to see whether the LNP has the maturity to engage in meaningful discussion.”
Mr Katter defended his decision to engage in the abortion debate, while also maintaining that it was not the desired focus of his campaign strategy.
“I was asked a question by a journalist about what I believed, and I answered it,” he said.
“I thought that is what politicians seeking re-election are supposed to do – express honestly what their views are on issues so the voters can make up their minds.
“I think (discussing abortion) actually won us votes because even people who don’t agree with me probably liked the fact that I was willing to be honest about where I stand.
“I like that our party is transparent with what we believe and doesn’t try to be a small target.”
Mr Katter said he planned to reintroduce his bill calling for amendments to the Mount Isa Mines Act – labelling it “urgent” as the deadline looms for underground operations closures – as well as a bill that attempts to reduce abortion rates across the state.
He also plans to spend more time travelling the electorate.
“As a party leader during an election campaign, I have to travel a lot because I am trying to expand the number of seats we have in the parliament so that we can increase our ability to deliver for North Queenslanders,” he said.
“I think people across our region know that is what I am trying to achieve.”