Bob Katter

This week on Wisdom Mongrel Patriot, Bob hits the road and takes listeners deep into the heart of the Kennedy electorate to showcase the people, places and businesses that make Northern Australia tick. Our first stop is the tropical paradise of Mission Beach, where Bob sits down with one of the region's young entrepreneurs, Liam Johnson, owner of Scotties Bar and Grill. Liam shares the reality of starting a small business in today's Australia. Despite the challenges, he's chosen to back himself and invest in his community. Why would a young bloke take the risk? What keeps him going? And what does the future hold for regional small business? Along the way, Bob and Elise explore the wider Mission Beach region; one of Australia's true hidden gems. From pristine beaches and tropical rainforest to tourism, agriculture and local enterprise, they discuss why this corner of North Queensland continues to attract people looking for opportunity and a better way of life. And because no road trip with Bob would be complete without it, listeners are treated to another classic Bob serenade that proves once again that politics and music are never far apart in Kennedy. This week is a story about backing yourself, building something from scratch and having a crack when plenty of others wouldn't.  Pull up a stool, grab a cold one and join Bob as he takes Wisdom Mongrel Patriot on the road. 🎙️🍻🌴

This week, Bob sits down with AgForce Queensland President Shane McCarthy, better known to mates and colleagues simply as "Sheep". In a frank discussion about the future of Australian agriculture, Sheep outlines the biggest challenges facing farmers today. He discusses the need for cutting through layers of red and green tape to ensure that producers can get on with the job of feeding the nation. The pair discuss the growing burden of regulation, the need for practical policy solutions, and why governments must start trusting farmers instead of tying them up in bureaucracy. They also tackle the escalating pest crisis affecting rural Australia, including the impact of pigs, wild dogs, wild cats and other feral animals and invasive species that continue to devastate livestock, crops and native ecosystems across the country. Along the way, Bob and Sheep share a few laughs, including a brief detour into the mystery of Bob's famously crooked nose, before reflecting on the homeland and values that shaped them both. It's a conversation about agriculture, common sense and the people who keep Australia fed. Listen now for a paddock-to-parliament discussion on farming, freedom and the future of regional Australia.

28 May 2026: On World Blood Cancer Day today, Kennedy MP Bob Katter has welcomed the Federal Government’s announcement of strengthened funding for a major recruitment campaign to register hundreds of thousands more stem cell donors to be potentially called upon help save the lives of fellow Australians. In response to a question from Mr Katter in Parliament yesterday, the Health Minister confirmed Australia continued to hold one of the smallest stem cell donor registries of all developed countries – three years after vowing to expedite a significant increase in lagging donor registrations following representations by Mr Katter. The Minister also confirmed the Government’s call for tenders this week to establish a specialist stem cell donor registry and clinical service, to facilitate greater donor-recipient matches as the last hope for survivors. Mr Katter said the Life Saving List community campaigners had increased bone marrow donor registrants from 168,000 to 190,000 in the three years since the Health Minister noted Australia had not moved fast enough to help more blood cancer patients find donors. “In these three years, Australia has lost 18,000 lives – 20 people a day – including my nephew Liam,” he told Parliament before today joining community-based campaigners with the Parliamentary Group on Bone Marrow Donation to mark World Cancer Day in the Speaker’s Courtyard, where special guests from the Canberra Raiders demonstrated the quick and simple test to go on the register with just a cheek swab, or when donating blood. Along with Australian Red Cross Lifeblood and Stem Cell Donors Australia, Life Saving List campaigner Josephine O’Brien said she was grateful for the progress in the two years since the premature death of husband Liam, who remained steadfast in his commitment to growing the stem cell donor registry whilst fighting for his own life. Acknowledging the work of Lifeblood for the treatments Liam required daily thanks to the kindness of strangers donating, Mrs O’Brien said: “No family should have to carry the weight of finding a donor alone. When someone you love needs a stem cell match, you are already facing the hardest moment of your life.” She also paid tribute to the Canberra Raiders for their ongoing support with the “relentless efforts” of campaigners and Parliamentary Group on Bone Marrow Donation – including Mr Katter, Macarthur MP Dr Mike Freelander, Kooyong MP Dr Monique Ryan, Forde MP Mr Ted O’Brien, Lyons MP Hon. Rebecca White and their staff – who fought for the inclusion in 2023 of cheek-swab registrations as “a giant leap forward for Australia that would not have been achieved for many years without the force of Liam O’Brien behind it”. Mr Katter said the additional expansion of 17-year-olds to the list of eligible donors would increase the pool of potential registrants from which to recruit potential stem cell donors by several hundred thousand young Australians; and welcomed the Minister’s further advice that the successful tenderer to provide clinical services to match donors with patients, would be asked to consider whether the age limit be raised from 35-40 years.

Josephine O'Brien joins Wisdom Mongrel Patriot on World Blood Cancer Day to share the deeply personal story behind the campaign that is transforming Australia's stem cell donor registry. After losing her husband Liam to blood cancer, Josephine has turned unimaginable grief into action, leading the fight to grow Australia's donor register and give other families the chance they never had. Bob Katter, his Chief of Staff Kahla Kruger, and Josephine discuss Australia's chronic shortage of stem cell donors, the progress made through the Life Saving List campaign, the importance of simple cheek-swab registrations, and why thousands more young Australians are needed on the register. This is a story of courage, persistence and hope, and a reminder that a single donor can mean the difference between life and death. Every Australian aged 17-35 can help. One cheek swab could save a life.

Australia was once a country where an ordinary Australian could buy a home, raise a family and have the mortgage knocked over by 30. Today, young Australians are being sold a very different dream, a lifetime on the hamster wheel, saddled with million-dollar mortgages they may never escape.

In this episode of Wisdom Mongrel Patriot, Bob Katter and Elise deliver a blunt dissection of the 2026 Federal Budget - and ask the question many in the bush are already asking: where exactly does Regional Australia fit into the nation’s future? Where does self-sufficiency fit? Where does the Australia we used to know and love fit?

Bob Katter, KENNEDY MP, has attended commemorations for the Battle of the Coral Sea in Cardwell over the weekend, joining veterans, families, community members and local organisations in paying tribute to those who served during one of the most significant naval battles of World War II.P The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought in May 1942, marked a major turning point in the Pacific War and is widely recognised as the battle that helped halt the Japanese advance towards Australia. Mr Katter said commemorative events like the Cardwell service were critically important in ensuring Australians never forgot the sacrifices made by servicemen and women who defended the nation. “These men and women stood up when their country needed them most. Many never came home, and many others carried the scars of war for the rest of their lives,” Mr Katter said. “Events like this are about paying our respects and making sure younger generations understand the price that was paid for the freedoms we enjoy today. “Regional communities have always carried a very strong tradition of service. You see it right across North Queensland and I have spent untold hours in pubs talking to families who have served generation after generation in defence of this country.” Mr Katter also thanked organisers, veterans and volunteers involved in the commemorations for ensuring the legacy of Australia’s servicemen and women continues to be honoured. “As Australians, we have a duty to remember them. Ceremonies like the Battle of the Coral Sea commemorations keep that spirit of remembrance alive.” ENDS

What started as a small idea tossed over a meat pie in a bakery in 1977, has has turned into one of the biggest drawcard events for North Queensland.

6 May 2026: After spending half his 50-year political life fighting to secure a home-grown supply of cleaner and greener biofuels, Federal MP Bob Katter has backed in an historic alliance of agricultural heavyweights united behind a national ethanol mandate – to protect our health and enable our iconic feedstock industries to deliver greater fuel self-sufficiency – at the highest levels of government.  Following direct discussions with Canberra in the wake of yesterday’s joint plea by Australia’s peak grain and sugarcane representatives for sustainably produced ethanol-blended petrol to be mandated nationwide, the North Queensland MP called on the Federal Government to “provide reassurances that the long-overdue implementation of an enforced ethanol mandate is being considered at the highest levels of government” ahead of next week’s Budget, amid the world’s worst energy shock strangling global supply chains and crippling domestic industries. “Ethanol and biodiesel production can be immediately scaled up within a year to extend our existing fuel stockpiles – instead of being shipped off to safeguard other countries’ fuel security because demand from the foreign oil giants for Australian-owned biofuels is still not growing even in the case of domestic supply disruptions and soaring prices,” said Mr Katter. “However, in just 10 years, sustainably Australian-grown and manufactured renewable ethanol could be supplying 10 per cent of Australia’s total domestic petrol requirements, alongside local biodiesel for another five per cent self-sufficiency if there was a biofuels mandate.” The alliance of the National Farmers Federation, GrainGrowers, Australian Sugar Manufacturers and CaneGrowers behind a domestic biofuels mandate follows two decades of both the major and green parties’ rejection of seven of Mr Katter’s private members bills* since 2002 for sovereign biofuels security – with 200 (or one-fifth of all) speeches to Parliament referencing ethanol and biofuels about 1000 times since his 1993 election to the seat of Kennedy; and state laws for ethanol mandates moved by KAP MPs along with dozens more ethanol representations to the Queensland Parliament by Traeger MP Robbie Katter since 2012. “Our laws have been laughed out of Parliament by every government this century,” said Mr Katter after repeated warnings of an inevitable fuel supply crisis facing an island nation left to become dependent on imports without future-proofing our critical fuel and food industries – including the Sovereign Fuel Security Bill 2022 drafted with crossbenchers in the pandemic-era Liberal-National government, for the new Labor Government to secure 80 per cent fuel sufficiency (by banning oil exports for local refining with biofuels) and reliable power and fertiliser inputs for vulnerable industrial and regional communities. “Whilst two of the world’s ‘big-four’ export industries in Australian grain and sugar join everyday Australians screaming for greater fuel self-sufficiency – with no end in sight to the Middle East war shock on global supply chains – governments must act immediately to secure our biofuels future with primary producers and local manufacturers in the national interest, and expand domestic refining to include our own indigenous oil reserves sold offshore for a fraction of the price it costs us to buy back, from our foreign overlords, as 90 per cent of our refined fuel needs.” Mr Katter was equally scathing of the commercially conflicted big oil and motoring groups who for years pushed back against ethanol-blended fuel mandates instituted in 2007 by the NSW Government, to prevent deaths from carcinogenic aromatics and tailpipe emissions that ethanol instead reduces – “which is why more than 60 countries have already moved to ethanol, without all their cars breaking down all over the place” and increased ethanol content to almost one-third of Brazil’s petrol; 20 per cent now mandated in India (five years ahead of national targets to cut oil imports, reduce emissions and support domestic agricultural industries); 15 per cent in the United States, and 10 per cent in China. “So all the lies about engine incompatibility peddled through a complicit media, they can share the guilt of needless deaths of thousands of people in our big cities from small particle emissions,” said Mr Katter. “And we will be moving our legislation once again, to hold every major party and greenie politician to account to the Australian people, as to why we’re one of the last countries on Earth – apart from New Zealand, Africa, and the oil-producing nations like Russia, South America and Venezuela – to future-proof our renewable biofuels self-sufficiency without even spending a cent on a mandate, as well as protecting our health and hip pockets, along with our iconic regional industries and communities.” ENDS * Following the Fuel Quality Standards (Renewable Content of Motor Vehicle Fuel) Amendment Bills put to the Australian Parliament as an Independent MP in 2002, 2005 and 2006, the Katter’s Australian Party MP further moved his Renewable Fuel Bills in 2013, 2016 and 2017, and the Sovereign Fuel Security Bill in 2022.