It has been 50 years in the making for the people’s politician Bob Katter MHR, the ‘Father of the House’ who has been a member of both state and federal parliaments for more than half-a-century, equalling Billy Hughes’ time as a member of the House of Representatives.
Bob has seen it all, playing kingmaker in a ‘hung’ parliament and his trademark of not tolerating fools from any side of the House or senate is there for any member wishing to sample it.
The House decided to commemorate the canny former miner’s milestone achievement by commissioning a top artist to paint Bob as he stands with the portrait to be hung among other notables in the parliamentary gallery.
There has not ever been another politician like him, with strong, inherited, conservative Queensland views starting with his father, Bob Senior who held the vast 219,065.5 sq mile seat of Kennedy before him. Bob holds Kennedy today with a margin of 65.75 per cent.
Bob Snr joined the Country Party and won Kennedy from the Labor Party in 1966. The seat had been in Labor hands for all but two terms since Federation and Bob Snr took the seat with DLP preferences.
Bob Jnr quit state politics, after his father decided not to contest Kennedy at the March 1990 poll and retired, passing away a week before the election. Bob Jnr contested Kennedy in 1993 which he won for the National Party but resigned in 2001 to run as an independent because the “Nationals had lost their way” a sentiment still ringing true in federal parliament today.
Suzie, Bob’s long suffering wife, has been an integral component of the Katter dynasty seeing her son Robbie enter state politics in 2012, winning the seat of Mt Isa, now Traeger which he still holds.
One of Katter’s many remarkable achievements was his almost single-handed restoration of the live cattle export trade to Indonesia after Labor Minister Joe Ludwig in 2011 placed a six month suspension on the trade for alleged animal cruelty at an Indonesian abattoir.
During the ban Bob got hold of the Indonesian Ambassador taking him on a tour of western Queensland revealing the adverse economic and social upheaval the ban caused in the regions.
The Federal Court later found the ban unlawful but in the meantime through Bob’s efforts and those of Georgetown producer Barry Hughes, the trade was restored and continues today.
Bob has always held his own with any reporter particularly those who have tried to upstage him. In an exchange with a young girl from a Cairns radio station, who kept interjecting at a media conference, asking the wily member if he supported the same-sex marriage plebiscite, his sanctified reply was memorable.
Amid answering other unrelated questions from the media throng, he quipped: “I will talk to you when you ask me something important!”
Bob Katter (r) with his parents and siblings
This portrait gives me a strange feeling that the ALP could all be locked up around Xmas. Malcolm Roberts said in a video a long time ago, “we have jail cells under the Parliament, it’s time we used them”.
https://www.tiktok.com/@tappermail/video/7570081011170561298
I visited Parliament House in Canberra several times, Katter was the ONLY politician that impressed me. Once he did a mathematical calculation in his head that I would have had to use a pencil and paper to calculate. He not only has principles, he has a working brain.
A great politician, whose sole interest is in the success of our future as a nation, one people under one flag. Thank you for your contribution to public life, the courage of your conviction and the hight standard you have always set for henesty, decence and respect.
He should be proud, it’s a dame good portrait in detail. And credit were credit is due.