Bored rugby league players should be given rifles and unleashed on national parks to shoot feral animals in the off season, colourful veteran MP Bob Katter suggests.
The north Queensland politician used a question in parliament to float the unorthodox idea, arguing it would help protect threatened species and slash the number of invasive pigs and toads.
Now the NRL grand final was over, “one thousand north Queensland rugby league players are bored”, Mr Katter said in his question to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday.
“The idle mind is a devil’s workshop.
“Please give the boys back their rifles and licensed, I emphasise licensed, access to national parks.
“Don’t worry about the pests in this place (parliament). Please, would you worry about the pests in north Queensland?” Mr Katter said.
In response, Mr Albanese said the government was taking the matter of pest control seriously because invasive species were having a “real impact” on wildlife.
He then handed off to Agriculture Minister Julie Collins, who outlined a list of existing government policies aimed at tackling the spread of feral animals.
Mr Katter has long campaigned for governments to take more action on introduced and dangerous creatures, but his sights have often extended to native species as well.
Across his three decades in federal parliament, the 80-year-old has long championed increased firearm use, including a 2022 call to arm young teens to defend Australia.
“If you have five million rifles in Australia, and if (you have) people knowing how to use them … then you have to have a hundred million man army to invade Australia, and hold it,” he told Sky News.
The far-north Queensland MP is a strong supporter of culling to manage crocodile numbers, and has previously proposed safari-style croc hunting tours, run by local Indigenous groups.
Mr Katter is best known outside his sprawling electorate for comments made during Australia’s gay marriage postal survey in 2017, when he declared people were “entitled to their sexual proclivities”, but he wouldn’t spend any time on the issue because “every three months a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in north Queensland”.
More recently, he was condemned by colleagues for threatening to punch a journalist who asked about his Lebanese heritage during a media conference in August.
Mr Katter never apologised for the remarks, which also included calling the Nine News reporter a “racist” for asking about his ethnicity.
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