Weekend news bulletins were somewhat reticent about broadcasting the news of Bob Katter holding his huge seat of Kennedy, after challenger Noeline Ikin conceded defeat on Saturday.
This is the first time in 12 years Katter has had to rely on preferences to hold onto Kennedy. The damage was done by a corrupt ‘a vote for Katter is a vote for Labor’ campaign which swayed gullible voters who were determined not to have a re-run of the Gillard/Rudd debacle aided and abetted by two mindless independents, Oakshott and Windsor, turning federal parliament into the laughing stock of the world.
KAP scrutineers at Kennedy polling booths reported a strong preference flow from the Liberals, ALP and PUP to Katter, as many voters hedged their bets in their determination to keep Labor out.
The Liberal’s nation-wide $13m advertising campaign targeting Bob Katter will be challenged in the Supreme Court according to party sources. Tableland KAP supporters and party members said it was one of the dirtiest campaigns they had ever seen.
Senator Ian McDonald, in the same vein as his retiring colleague Ron Boswell, has long been a critic of Katter. Upon analysis of his often severe invective it is unclear just what the good senator has to complain about.
It could be Katter’s long held opposition to free trade and free marketing which has destroyed primary producers and manufacturing industries, or maybe his opposition to foreign government-owned corporations owning Australian farmland, or his Bill on the table to create a reconstruction and development board designed to alleviate the horrendous $66 billion rural debt held by rapacious trading banks or perhaps his strong opposition to foreign-owned coal seam gas companies ravaging some of the best farmland in the world?
After all the Liberals are owned lock, stock and barrel by the gas and oil companies.
McDonald was LNP challenger Noeline Ikin’s mentor throughout the campaign. For his efforts, at the weekend Prime Minister Tony Abbott dropped him from his new ministry, much to McDonald’s public disgust and disappointment.
He said he would continue to support Mr Abbott.
If PM Tony Abbott survives an action against him by jailed former One Nation director, David Ettridge listed in the Canberra Supreme Court, then we had better fasten our seatbelts for a tumultuous Liberal party ride. – from Robert J Lee in Cairns