#ausvotes

Founded by one of the longest serving Members of Parliament in Australia, Bob Katter was elected in the seat of Flinders to the Queensland Parliament in 1974, and held it till 1992. He then ran for the Federal seat of Kennedy and has held it to the present day in the House of Representatives.

Katter’s father Bob Snr, held the seat of Kennedy from 1966 to 1990.

The family ideology is far from main stream. Katter Snr was originally a member of The Labor Party, but gradually moved politically right to the National Party. Bob Jnr commenced his political affiliations at that point on the right - in the Country Party, which eventually became the National Party.

After entering the Federal Parliament in 1993, Katter steadily lost a connection with the values of the Nationals, and resigning his membership, became an Independent in 2001. He has continued to command 70% of the vote with an 18 point majority and Kennedy remains the 4th safest seat in Australia. In 2011 Bob Katter registered his own political party - Katter’s Australia Party.

Bob is a social conservative who values the traditional family values Australia was built on. Of Lebanese-Irish extraction, he is a Maronite Catholic who retains a slightly economic socialist view. Opposing privatisation and economic deregulation, he has a stoic opposition to Climate Change regulation, a fierce commitment to Indigenous interests that pervade his constituency, and a proud concurrence with the oath sworn on the Eureka Flag.

Katter is passionate about protectionism in local agriculture, and routinely informs broader Australia of dangers facing local industry.

In the formation of the minority government of 2010, Katter supported the Coalition.

The KAP have adopted the same value set with a focus on social cohesion that is balanced with mutual responsibility. They prioritise economic self sufficiency and defence of Australia’s interests in its economic, political and military capacities.

Occupying the heartland of the Queensland bush, property and freedom are essential doctrine to the KAP; they oppose excessive government intervention in areas that individuals are well able to regulate themselves. Equality and the rule of law are revered in the KAP, along with a contemporary approach to the economic realities that face a rapidly growing Australian economy that is now the 12th largest in the world.

While the KAP are in their infancy as a political party, they have a very experienced and devoted leader at the helm, and unashamedly defensive of the Australian agricultural industry, are singularly committed to the hardworking engine room that is rural Australia.