56 Facts About Bob Katter

Robert Bellarmine Carl Katter was born on 22 May 1945 and is an Australian politician who has served as the member of parliament for the Queensland division of Kennedy since 1993 and father of the House since 2022.

Bob Katter was active in Queensland state politics from 1974 to 1992 and was a member of the National Party until 2001, afterwhich he left to sit as an independent until he formed Katter's Australian Party as his own party in 2011.

Bob Katter was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly at the 1974 state election, representing the seat of Flinders.

Bob Katter was elevated to cabinet in 1983, under Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and was a government minister until the National Party's defeat at the 1989 state election.

Bob Katter left state politics in 1992, and the following year was elected to federal parliament standing in the Division of Kennedy.

Bob Katter resigned from the National Party in the lead-up to the 2001 federal election, and has since been re-elected four more times as an independent and another four times for his own party.

Bob Katter's son, Robbie Katter, is a state MP in Queensland, the third generation of the family to be a member of parliament.

Bob Katter was born on 22 May 1945 in Cloncurry, Queensland.

Bob Katter is the one of three children born to Mabel Joan and Robert Cummin Katter; his mother died in 1971 and his father had three more children with his second wife, including Carl.

Bob Katter's father was raised in Cloncurry where he ran a clothing shop and managed a local cinema.

Bob Katter was elected to Cloncurry Shire Council in 1946 and to federal parliament in 1966.

Bob Katter is of Lebanese descent through his paternal grandfather Carl Robert Bob Katter, who was born in Bsharri and immigrated to Australia with his parents in 1898.

Bob Katter was naturalised in 1907, after previously being refused naturalisation under the White Australia policy.

Bob Katter received his early education in Cloncurry, where he was one of only six at his school who finished year 12.

Bob Katter went on to the University of Queensland, where he studied law, but later dropped out without graduating.

Bob Katter served in the Citizens Military Forces, with the rank of second lieutenant.

Bob Katter's father was a member of the Australian Labor Party until 1957, when he left during the Labor split of that year.

Bob Katter later joined the Country Party, now the National Party.

The younger Bob Katter was a Country Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland from 1974 to 1992, representing Flinders in north Queensland.

Bob Katter was Minister for Northern Development and Aboriginal and Islander Affairs from 1983 to 1987, Minister for Northern Development, Community Services and Ethnic Affairs from 1987 to 1989, Minister for Community Services and Ethnic Affairs in 1989, Minister for Mines and Energy in 1989, and Minister for Northern and Regional Development for a brief time in 1989 until the Nationals were defeated in that year's election.

Bob Katter was a strong supporter of Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Bjelke-Petersen subsequently endorsed Bob Katter to succeed Ahern as leader and premier.

Bob Katter returned to cabinet after only a month, following Cooper's successful ouster of Ahern in September 1989.

Bob Katter did not run for re-election to state Parliament in 1992.

Bob Katter ran as the National candidate in his father's former seat of Kennedy at the 1993 federal election, facing his father's successor, Labor's Rob Hulls.

In 1994, Bob Katter advocated against the Human Rights Act 1994, a federal law that bypassed Tasmania's anti-gay laws, claiming the government was "helping the spread of AIDS" and legitimizing "homosexual behavior".

Bob Katter believed the laws jeopardized states' rights in Australia.

Bob Katter was re-elected with a large swing in 1996, and was re-elected almost as easily in 1998.

However, when he transferred to federal politics, he found himself increasingly out of sympathy with the federal Liberal and National parties on economic and social issues, with Bob Katter being opposed to neoliberalism and social liberalism.

In 2001, Bob Katter resigned from the National Party and easily retained his seat as an independent at the general elections of 2001,2004,2007 and 2010, each time ending up with a percentage vote in the high sixties after preferences were distributed.

Bob Katter presented his 20 points document and asked the major parties to respond before deciding which party he would support.

On 5 June 2011, Bob Katter launched a new political party, Bob Katter's Australian Party, which he said would "unashamedly represent agriculture".

Bob Katter made headlines after singing to his party's candidates during a meeting on 17 October 2011, saying it was his "election jingle".

Bob Katter had gone into the election holding the seat with a majority of 18 percent, making it the second-safest seat in Australia.

However, reportedly due to anger at his decision to back Kevin Rudd for Prime Minister following Julia Gillard's live cattle export ban, Bob Katter still suffered a primary-vote swing of over 17 points.

On 15 August 2017 Bob Katter announced that the Turnbull government could not take his support for granted in the wake of the 2017 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis, which ensued over concerns that several MPs held dual citizenship and thus may be constitutionally ineligible to be in Parliament.

Bob Katter added that if one of the affected MPs, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, lost his seat, the Coalition could not count on his support for confidence and supply.

In November 2018, Bob Katter secured funds for three inland dam-irrigation schemes in North Queensland.

In July 2024 it was announced that a portrait of Bob Katter has been commissioned to be hung in the federal parliament.

Bob Katter opposes privatisation and economic deregulation and strongly supports traditional Country Party statutory marketing.

The sobriquet 'Mad Bob Katter' was coined by his opponents to describe his nationalistic developmentalism.

In 1980, Bob Katter seconded a motion by Don Lane calling on the Queensland state government to "protect the lives of unborn Queensland children being killed by abortion".

In 2006, Bob Katter voted against a federal bill which would increase the availability of abortion drugs.

Bob Katter has opposed enacting climate change legislation to control emissions.

Bob Katter has additionally pioneered protests against imported bananas, and is an opponent of the concentration of the Australian supermarket industry amongst Coles and Woolworths.

An opponent of the tougher gun control laws introduced in the wake of the 1996 massacre in Port Arthur, Tasmania, Bob Katter was accused in 2001 of signing a petition promoted by the Citizens Electoral Council, an organisation that claims the Port Arthur massacre was a conspiracy.

Bob Katter has stated that he always and still believes there was no conspiracy.

In 2017, Bob Katter called for a "Trump-like travel ban" in Australia after a New South Welshman was arrested on terrorism charges.

That same year, Bob Katter repeated a pledge used by the far-right organisation "Proud Boys", including that he was "a proud western chauvinist".

In 1987, as Queensland minister for Aboriginal and Islander affairs, Bob Katter credited the state government with reducing Aboriginal deaths in custody by introducing "new detention procedures to divert people arrested for minor offences away from traditional custody after a three-hour cooling off period".

Bob Katter is an opponent of voter identification laws, denouncing the Coalition's proposed introduction of them in 2021 as a racist system that would disenfranchise Aboriginal communities.

In November 1989, Bob Katter claimed there were almost no homosexuals in North Queensland.

Bob Katter promised to walk backwards from Bourke across his electorate if they represented more than 0.001 percent of the population.

In December 2017, Bob Katter was one of only four members of the House of Representatives to oppose the Marriage Amendment Bill 2017 legalising same-sex marriage in Australia.

Bob Katter occasionally identifies as being an Aboriginal Australian and has described himself as a blackfella in federal parliament, in interviews, during television appearances and at public events.

Bob Katter represents much of the territory that his father represented in state parliament.