Right-wing independent federal MP Bob Katter is famously on record as saying he would “walk backwards to Bourke” if a gay community could be found living in his north Queensland electorate.
A 70-strong protest for equal marriage rights outside Katter’s Mt Isa electorate office on September 11 showed that he does indeed have gay constituents. However, the MP has not made good his promise.
Protest organiser James Newburrie has invited Katter to instead take part in a 130 kilometre walk from Mt Isa to Cloncurry to raise money for, and awareness about, teenage suicide prevention. Homophobia is a major cause of teenage suicide in rural Australia.
“Thirty percent of gay teens will commit serious self harm or suicide. That’s compared to 14% of their heterosexual peers. Both of those numbers are way too high but I can’t just sit by anymore and do nothing while empty rhetoric from politicians makes it worse,” Newburrie told the ABC’s The World Today on September 12.
Rally participants rejected Katter’s denial of the existence of non-heterosexuals in his electorate.
A protester told The World Today: “I mean, we all work in his community. We serve him. We’re in the shops and the banks and everything but he doesn’t want to acknowledge that we’re here. He just wants to ridicule us and make it okay for everyone else to do the same.”
Explaining the point of the rally in the September 13 North West Star, Newburrie wrote: “Changing Mr Katter’s mind may be a lost cause, but my sincere hope is that you might take a moment and think of your children and grandchildren … If one of them were gay, would you tell them that you find them vile and disgusting and less than human?
“I don’t believe you would, or at least I hope that you wouldn’t. And, even if you would — your child now knows that at least 70 people in this town support them. That was the point.”