The row between the Queensland government and the Katter’s Australian Party over Senator Fraser Anning’s maiden parliamentary speech is getting seriously out of control.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Senator Anning sits in the federal parliament in Canberra and therefore in theory has absolutely nothing to do with what happens in George St.
But that doesn’t change the fact that it become a serious state matter and no party is coming out of this nonsense smelling of roses.
I am no fan of Senator Anning and think his views belong to a stuffy and staid 1950s Australia happily consigned to cut-price history books.
To hear that he is now doing a tour of Australia with American far-right agitators Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter has done nothing to improve my opinion of him and shows he is prepared to use any cynical move to get his name in the public eye and presumably increase his chance of re-election by hoovering up the Hansonite vote in Queensland.
I’m disappointed the KAP is lending their party name to support his agenda.
Nonetheless Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s response is ham-fisted and inappropriate.
Egged on by the opportunistic Oppposition, the Premier clothed herself in holier-than-thou outrage as she first threatened to remove four state KAP staff (not five as was originally reported) and then carried out her threat.
She claimed it was because of Senator Anning’s “final solution” reference whereas the Senator seems more like a gormless individual who has barely heard of European history let alone understood the Holocaust meaning.
The more likely reason was to get the Premier out of a now inconvenient agreement she made with the KAP in the last parliament to prop up her minority government and the impact is to North Queenslanders who will now have less effective representation.
It is shameless hypocrisy though the KAP’s threat to refer her to the Crime and Misconduct Commission is equally misguided.
All parties need to step back and find some common ground – and common sense. Derek Barry