Bob Katter in Charters Towers
Bob Katter has warned Clive Palmer off his turf, suggesting the miner might be carted off to the knackery after the billionaire last night taunted the maverick independent MP that he could run for his seat.
Dismissing Mr Palmer’s suggestion that he might seek preselection in his seat of Kennedy, Mr Katter said the idea seemed like ’’a shotgun marriage’’ to him, one without a happy ending.
Mr Katter warned Mr Palmer: ’’You’d want to get a bit fit to handle an electorate the size of Kennedy.
Clive Palmer Photo: Getty Images
’’You wouldn’t want to be like the mickey bull that either goes from stress or gets carted off to the knackery.’’
The member for Kennedy said that Mr Palmer, whom he referred to as ’’the gentleman’’, had ’’also tried for preselection in just about every seat in Queensland’’.
’’I am neither shocked, surprised or concerned. The LNP has offered the Kennedy endorsement to just about every person in Australia – their success rate is infinitely more worse that the NSW rugby team,’’ he said.
Mr Katter said he was ’’happy to offer some pearls of wisdom’’ to his possible political opponent.
He added that Mr Palmer was welcome to the seat if he could achieve any of the Independent MP’s policy nirvana goals:
- Save the sugar industry through the mandating of ethanol;
- Build the Pentland Ethanol/Sugar/Electricity Generation Plant providing cheaper renewable electricity and fuel;
- Support the Clean Energy Corridor with a transmission line and clean energy proposals, between Townsville and Mt Isa;
- Stop fly-in fly-out workers, as country mining towns need permanent populations;
- Start building our nation, we need roads, ports, dams, rail
’’If anyone could manage to get these projects up, I’d vote for them myself,’’ Mr Katter said.
Personally penning his statement to the press, ’’BobKat’’ ended on a characteristically positive note on the potential challenge by Mr Palmer.
’’I’ve had some pretty formidable opponents in my time, and no disrespect to him, but I don’t put him in that category.’’
Mr Katter has represented the vast northern seat since 1993 and boasts one of the largest margins in federal politics, comfortably holding Kennedy with a buffer of 18.3 per cent.
The independent, who has held the north Queensland seat since 1993, said it was up to Mr Palmer whether he stood in the seat but he did not rate his chances.
Speaking last night from his resort in Tahiti, Mr Palmer said he was also considering running for Liberal National Party preselection in the seat of Fairfax, which is being vacated by Liberal veteran Alex Somlyay.
"It will be an electorate where I am known and people know what I stand for and the things I hold dear to me - an electorate which will play its part in the defeat of Labor," Mr Palmer told the ABC’s Lateline program.
The mining mogul this week backed away from his threat of running against Treasurer Wayne Swan in his electorate of Lilley, which led Mr Swan to crow that Mr Palmer had run away with "his tail between his legs"
