Bob Katter says that if it wasn't for his intervention the Prime Minister would not have come to North West Queensland during the floods and pledge $2 billion to restore the cattle industry.
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In a sometimes testy interview with the North West Star a week out from the election, Mr Katter said Scott Morrison had competing priorities such as the Townville floods and the Central Queensland fires and it was Mr Katter's intervention, "pulling some heart strings" that got the PM out west.
"The difference is that if he hadn't come out here we wouldn't have got two billion," Mr Katter said.
"It was my belief that if I couldn't get him to come here we'd get two hundred million."
When it was suggested that the mayors of the region were equally responsible in getting the money, Mr Katter said that was "absolute rubbish" and "two of them hate me with a pathological hatred."
"They had nothing to do with it," he said.
"I walked in demanding to see him (the PM)...and in 25 minutes I convinced him to go there.
"We have lost half a million cattle, the southern two-thirds of Queensland have had a drought in which they have lost almost similar figures - they have got nothing and my area has got two thousand million."
"I'll tell you how we got it - it was my personal friendship and good rapport I have with the prime minister and because I have the leverage - the balance of power."
When asked about Mount Isa, Mr Katter pointed to his work getting $5 million to get the CopperString project started. "We have a delicate situation here concerning one of the mines and I have to choose my words carefully here," he said. "Copperstring is worth $45 million a year benefit to just one mining operation."
However when the North West Star asked what had he done in 20 years for Mount Isa as the population declined from 30,000 to 20,000, Mr Katter became angry and blamed then Labor state Mines Minister Tony McGrady.
"(He) abolished the ban on fly in mining," he said.
"We haven't been able to get it back and the criticism is valid, I was the federal member, I should have found some way to beat McGrady, but his popularity was twice mine so he won, I lost and this town lost."
Mr Katter also defended not coming to Mount Isa until a week before the election.
"We haven't done a campaign launch at all, that's just incompetence on our part," he said.
"Then again we've been busy attacking and fighting to get the leverage we need."
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
