Australian Election 2010

What a mess, the election is over but there's still no winner - a hung Parliament. The Greens won their first House seat and have the balance of power in the Senate which is considered by many to be a disaster. There are three certain Independents - Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshot and Tony Windsor - all representing conservative electorates. They say they will consult and seek a stable outcome but we mustn't assume they will vote with the conservatives because they are fed up with both parties.

I can't help liking Bob Katter - he sticks up for rural Australia and thinks that agriculture is important and should be shown more respect. He's angry about imported bananas and how Coles and Woolworths holds the farmers to ransom and generally how our hard-working agricultural sector is getting screwed. He said yesterday "If I personally had the balance of power I would demand for rural Australia the right to survive. We have not had that right in 12 years of Liberal government and things have not improved significantly under the Labor Party".

So who is he? He's flamboyant and unmistakable in his big hat, some might say he looks like a real wally. In 1989 he claimed there were no homosexuals in his electorate of Charters Towers and promised to walk backwards from Burke if there were any. And when the Mount Isa Mayor declared they had a shortage of young women in their mining town and to 'ship the ugly ones out from the city' Bob Katter defended him. So he's a bit like Barnaby Joyce - a loose canon - and has the reputation of being an 'unrestrained' member of the House of Reps.

He's a former Queensland state MP who won the Northern Queensland federal seat of Kennedy for the Nationals in 1993 - held for a quarter of a century by his father Robert Cummin Katter. In 2001 he left the Nationals and won the seat comfortably as an Independent. Some of the things he feels passionate about are:

Increased subsidies for primary industy

Banning of overseas banana imports

Increased subsidies for uptake of ethanol - a product of sugar cane

Concern about Coles and Woolworths duopoly in the agricultural sector

Increased funding of health, education and broadband in the bush

I think his motives are clear when he said "All of our industries are collapsing. They can't survive under the neglect and in some cases, malicious neglect, of both parties. Populations have vanished and in some cases, industries have vanished. We are not saying it's payback time, but it may well be pay-up time".

I wonder who will be able to talk Katter around - Julia or Tony. He was a staunch support of Pauline Hanson and Tony Abbott was responsible for her downfall. He said "We are very scared of you people, because a lady who spoke her mind..... you took her out and put her in a steel cage like an animal for two years of her life. Now I disagree with a lot of what that person said, that person's name is Pauline Hanson."

In 1998 Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party shocked the Coalition when they won 11 seats in Queensland and guess who John Howard sent to get rid of her - bomb thrower Tony Abbott. He tried to dig up every piece of dirt he could on Hanson and her associates. The outcome was the end of One Nation and the gaoling of Hanson. She ended up in prison because she had the guts to say what most of us were thinking - especially about immigration - but it wasn't politically correct and she had to go.

And to make things even more complicated, Governor General Quentin Bryce is in a pickle because her son-in-law is Labor man Bill Shorten and he was one of the men who instigated Kevin Rudd's assasination. He has been pegged as having aspirations for the top job himself with one betting agency making him favourite to lead Labor to the next election. So should the Govenor General step away from the decision-making process for a new government?

We await the outcome with bated breath.