Katter talks footy, ethanol and polls in Whitsundays

The first thing Bob Katter did when he came into Proserpine on Sunday was to visit his former on-field footy mate Laurie Goldman at the Metropole Hotel.

Late into Proserpine due to weather delaying his flight into Mackay, the outspoken leader of Australia’s newest party told his welcoming committee he’d "just go and say g’day to an old mate".

Goldman was behind the bar when Katter spotted him.

"This man …" Katter said slipping in behind the bar and turning to the audience of blokes on the other side, "is the toughest bugger I’ve ever seen on a football field," he said taking his hat off to the publican.

After a rock star reception in Gympie early last week, where the media likened Katter’s visit to that of Justin Bieber, after scores of bingo ladies waved and cheered at the man in the hat from across the street, Proserpine was somewhat quiet on a drizzly Sunday morning.

"Nobody knew much about me when I was an Independent. Now suddenly once we formed the party, I suppose it’s almost like people can buy shares in our policies. I don’t like using the word vision but it’s almost like we all have the same vision, the same hope for Australia," Mr Katter said on route to the Proserpine RSL in Chapman Street for his public meeting with candidate for the seat of Whitsunday Amanda Camm. Early polls tipped the Australia Party at 0.2 per cent, they soon moved up to eight and now Katter says they’re tracking a little higher than 14 per cent. Some 40 people gathered at the RSL upstairs to greet Katter applauding him as he climbed the stairs.

"I have asked scores and scores of meetings, blokes in pubs in drinking circles and people in the street and I ask them … "what is the difference between the ALP and the LNP?" nobody can tell me. If the two major parties are the North Pole … then Katter’s Australian Party is the South – that’s how far apart our thinking is. ALP and LNP believe in free markets, we believe in cutting Woollies and Coles back to under 20 per cent of the market. Currently having 88 per cent of the market where in America they have 23 per cent and they are squealing. Cutting the major supermarkets right back will give farmers a fair go," he said.

Mr Katter talked passionately about the travesty that was the de-regulation of the dairy, tobacco and sugar industry which he says brought farming communities to their knees.

"This is why my rage and hatred for the LNP runs so deep. I represented the biggest dairy industry in the region. This was back when I was part of the National Party. Now I saw this happen to sugar and tobacco and then they wanted to deregulate the dairy industry," the crowd was enthralled. "If you deregulate milk, we will be murdered. I argued. There are only two people to sell milk to in this nation. No one listened. The day after it was deregulated milk went from 59 cents a litre to 42 cents a litre, I then left and became an Independent. I was so disgusted," he said.

Katter has mega plans for the state and big plans for the Whitsundays including ethanol and electricity made from bagasse at the mills.

"Mining is unpredictable but there is about $5000 million the state can use from royalties. If we use it in the region it is raised then there will be money to do the things we want to do, like build an ethanol plant in the Whitsundays …Every other country has gone to biofuels, America, Brazil even China is making headways into it. Our party will immediately go to ethanol and we are committed to giving $200m plus to each sugar mill to burn the bagasse and make our own electricity. I hate to say this but obviously we would be giving the money to Mackay first because its mill is still Australian owned," he did add.

"The other parties can say what they like about our ethanol plan because believe me there is no one on this planet who can outdo me when it comes to knowledge on ethanol," he said.

Mr Katter spoke for over an hour in Proserpine before making his way to the beach to talk to the boaties about their ramp heartache at the VMR. "There may only be a few people here today, but every town, every village, every suburb and every city there are meetings being held and there is a huge army out there that wants this country back … back from the big businesses that own and fund the campaigns of the two major parties," he said.