Katter On Today’s Unpleasantness: “I Want To Make It Absolutely Clear That I Consider Myself Nothing More And Nothing Less Than An Australian Because That Is What I Am And That Is All I Am And Anything Else Is Highly Offensive To Me For Reasons That Clearly Go Over The Head Of That Five Foot Five Channel 9 Reporter Like Most Things Must For Him When They Are More Complicated Than Ordering A Milky Coffee At Eagle Street Pier Because He Wouldn’t Know The First Thing About What It Means To Be A Proud Son Of Semitic Shopkeepers Who Fought To Forge A New Life In The North Nor Would He Understand What It Means To Share Kinship With My Kalkadoon Brother Cousins Who Have Been On This Land For Forty Thousand Years And When You Suggest That I Am Something Other Than Australian You Are Not Just Insulting Me You Are Insulting Every Man Who Ever Dug Bauxite Beside Me Every First Nations Mate Who Ever Stood Shoulder To Shoulder Beside Me And Every Soldier Who Ever Bled For This Country And I Tell You What I Am Still Capable Of Punching A Man Square In The Mouth For Saying Otherwise Because The Last Time I Did It Was Back In The Joh Government When I Was Minister For Aboriginal And Islander Affairs And A Young Staffer Of Russ Hinze Thought It Would Be Funny To Question My Right To Call Myself Australian And I Became The First Man In History To Punch Another Man’s Entire Chin Clean Off His Head Right There And Then Outside The Brisbane Jazz Club Where The Music Stopped Dead And The Trombonist Fainted And It Took Three Days Of Police Dogs And Volunteers To Find The Chin Until One Of The Dogs Ate It By Mistake And That Staffer Has Had To Suck His Soup Through A Straw Ever Since Which Is Why I Tell Young Reporters Today To Watch Their Words Because History Shows I Am Both Willing And Able To Defend My Australianness With My Fists If Necessary And If Kerry Packer Were Alive To See This Outfit At Channel 9 Sending Out Lightweight Twerps To Ask Racist Questions He Would Be Turning In His Grave Because Back In My Day Nine Reporters Were Men Who Could Hold Their Drink And Women Who Knew How To Roll You A Smoke And Hold Their Own Not Blokes Who Get Scared By A Raised Voice And Write Their Questions Down Phonetically On A Cheat Sheet And That Is Why I Say Again That I Am An Australian And That Is All I Am And That Is All I Will Ever Be And If You Can’t Understand That Then You Are The Racist Not Me”

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has released a short statement to the media this afternoon in response to an incident where he put the dog up a young reporter from Nine Entertainment Co’s Brisbane news desk.

The full statement can be read above or on the KAP webste.

More to come.