Okay, I've officially seen everything. Katto The Elder - former Queensland National Party State Cabinet Minister, who sat at same Cabinet table as former Premier Johannes “Sir Joh” Bjelke-Petersen in the 1980s - is supporting striking mine workers at Mt Isa. This has got to be the first strike that right-wingers have supported since the Orangemen killed off Northern Ireland power-sharing in 1974, or the truck drivers helped topple Allende in 1973.
This is not your father’s National Party. (Well, in your father’s day it would have been the Country Party, which is more ideologically accurate but also vulnerable to unfortunate puns by the likes of Gough Whitlam. Welcome to Australia, where we have a conservative Liberal Party, a National Party that only exists in three out of six States, a Labor Party whose only rusted-on voters are the unemployed, and Greens who, as Tim Blair noted, rarely live in places with any greenery. Queensland is governed by a Liberal National Party that's really a conservative regional party). Only a few months ago, the Party Formerly Led By John Anderson recruited Gary "Angry" Anderson, former lead singer of the hard rock band Rose Tattoo, as a member, possibly even as a future candidate.
So the party once led by "Sir" Joh - who won numerous Queensland elections by promising to crack down on street marchers and whale-loving greenies - could end up preselecting a candidate who sang "We can't be beaten/ We can rule the streets!" in 1982, "Calling" in 1989 and "I wish I were a tribesman/ in the hills of Afghanistan" in 1984.
Too sweet.
Myself, I think Azza should stand in Kingsford-Smith so the Nats could tell Labor "We see your shaven-headed pub-rocker from 1982, and raise you one”…
