Bob Katter, Sr.

The Honourable Robert Cummin Katter (5 September 1918 – 18 March 1990) was an Australian politician and Minister for the Army. He was a National Party of Australia/Country Party member of the Australian House of Representatives for 24 years.

Katter was born in Brisbane, Australia of Roman Catholic Lebanese descent and has been described as a cousin of the poet Khalil Gibran. He was raised and educated "probably by the nuns" in Cloncurry and later at Mount Carmel College on Charters Towers. He began legal studies at the [[University of Queensland] and resided at St Leo's College (when the College was at Wickham Terrace), but with the outbreak of World War II, he served as a lieutenant from 1940 and was promoted to captain in 1942. In July 1942 his service was terminated on grounds of ill health. Later he was a cinema proprietor and business manager in Cloncurry, Queensland before entering the Australian Parliament. He was also a Councillor of Cloncurry Shire Council from 1946 to 1967 and was its Chairman from 1948 to 1951 and 1964 to 1967.

Political career

Katter was at one time a member of the Australian Labor Party and a union delegate on the Brisbane wharves. According to Barry Jones he was also briefly a member of the Communist Party of Australia, although this is just speculation and there is no evidentiary basis for that allegation. He left the Labor Party in 1957 when the Queensland Labor Party split from the federal party. He subsequently ran unsuccessfully for the state seat of Flinders in the Queensland Legislative Assembly for the Liberal Party. He was elected as a Country Party member for Kennedy at the 1966 election and continued to hold the seat until his death in 1990. He was Minister for the Army from February 1972 until the McMahon government's defeat at the December 1972 election. From 1976 to 1983, he was Chairman of the House's Standing Committee on Road Safety and was a strong advocate of the introduction of random breath-testing in states, including Queensland, where it had not already been implemented. He was also a onetime Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade. He served two terms as Australian Parliamentary representative to the United Nations. Katter was appointed by the Australian Tourist Commission as an ambassador to the United States for tourism following the success of the film Crocodile Dundee there in 1986. His son Bob Katter is the current member for Kennedy. He played a major role in establishing the Stockman's Hall of Fame at Longreach. Katter's first wife died in 1971. He later re-married. Katter was survived by his second wife, Joy (whom he married in 1976), two sons (including Bob) and a daughter from his first marriage and two sons and a daughter from his second marriage.

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