13 June 2011

A Nationalist Commentary: Bob Katter’s New Party – And His LNP Critic


Bob Katter has founded a new party – the Australian Party. He intends to stand up against the decline of Australian agriculture and manufacturing via policies imposed on our country by the globalist mythology of ‘free trade’. He is labouring hard to acquire both a Federal registration and a Queensland State basis for this party. That is to the good in that it will promote public discussion around urgent issues. Yet, it also has other aspects which we must address because they impact upon the Australian nationalist politics of Australia First Party.

Australia First Party notes that Bob Katter was once part of the Liberal-National coalition until he seceded almost a decade ago. In many ways, Bob yearns for the ideology and politics of the former Country Party which did, in the days up to 1971, stand for the protection of Australian industry and agriculture. That was, after all, actual Australian state policy until this protectionist  position was overturned by the two party blocs and their paymasters after that time. Since then, globalisation and free trade have been the holy writ from above. Essentially, Bob has a sound notion, one which puts the Australian interest on manufacturing and agriculture ahead of the global economy, but he has wedded it to the forms and sentiments of yesterday; his position is one that does not of itself seek an independent Australian economic system – and it must come to that. The Katter solution is to ‘balance’ the competing interests, whereas the enemy globaliser recognizes no such other interest at all. This misconception shows up in the politics of the new party. Bob is nostalgic for an electoral solution to the imposed-compulsion of globalisation, one armed with a brand-product long on sentimentality, but short on fire in the belly. A new Country Party, whatever it calls itself, goes nowhere, because it would not build a national resistance movement to globalisation, a people’s movment for challenge and change.

It is noted that the Australian Party does not style itself a nationalist party, nor has it offered any real view of Australian population policy, immigration or the refugee invasion. That may be deliberate.

How should nationalists treat the Katter party? WE take stock of relevant facts. It is an electoral organisation and it will compete (in part) for some of the ground Australia First Party will cover. Of course, our party strives to be far more than an electoral structure, but it must still compete in the market place at election time. The Australian Party is not styled as a new version of One Nation (as Bob has put it) and it will serve by default to block the attempt by a new One Nation leadership to revive the party in parts of rural Queensland. Surely it will also familiarise a political market with economic nationalist ideas, train them if you like – for the future, when they can pass into the movement of nationalism.

Australia First Party in Queensland has its own job to do and we will not be sidetracked from it. We must cast a long eye on the Australian Party as it mobilises in the bush for we note it is symptomatic of a slow burning revolt, at first conceived in parliamentarist forms, but one destined to deepen as the multinationals grab at Aussie farms and water and try to establish our State as just another mining quarry.

There is a finale to this story. Bob Katter’s action received some unfriendly sarcastic dismissal-type criticism from a certain Mick Pattel, Liberal National Party (LNP) candidate for the State seat of Mt. Isa. It was very telling. In 2008, during the lead-up to the National Transport Shutdown in July 2008, Mr. Pattel appeared at a meeting in Toowoomba, representing his own transport action association and all armed with a call for “action”. On the platform he appeared with two members of the National Party who were trenchantly criticised by a member of Australia First Party for trying to get on the bandwagon of truckies’ fury against over-regulation, contract labour and fuel prices; our member said the Nationals were planning to betray them and he said these words just as Mr. Peter Schuback of the Australian Long Distance Owners’ And Drivers’ Association and later 2010 Candidate for our party for the Senate – was thrown out into the street.  Mr. Pattel swore he was there for the truckies and had his own independent agenda; after all, he handed out membership forms for his (abortive) Southern Cross Party. It was all crap. Mr. Pattel and his association and his ‘party’, were all put ups for the Nationals, part of what nationalists called the “satellite structures” put in place around the Liberal National parties to sidetrack people and protect the system from attack. If such a man should criticise Bob Katter, then it says a good point for him.

Of course, a good point does not mean that Australia First Party will be lining up with Bob. We have made it clear we will not. It just means that Australia First Party will maintain its independence and initiative to develop the bush fight-back against globalisation. We hope Bob Katter will contribute to that.

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