Bob Katter has suggested he was unaware of last weekend’s massacre in Orlando when he put out a campaign video that included a mock shooting because he doesn’t watch TV or read newspapers.
The maverick independent Queensland MP hit back at the “politically correct brigade”, including Sunrise host David Koch, for describing the satirical advertisement as tasteless and crossing the line.
In the video two men, one wearing an LNP shirt, the other an ALP one, nail a sign into the ground reading “Australia For Sale”.
Katter, a bitter opponent of foreign investment in agricultural industries, takes the sign down and inserts NOT into the slogan.
The scene cuts to Katter blowing smoke from his pistol and grinning sourly; a wider shot showing the prone bodies of the two men he has apparently killed.
The footage, produced by satirical newspaper the Betoota Advocate, earned the ire of Koch, who asked Katter whether it “crosses the line” in light of Sunday’s mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando, which took the lives of 49 people.
“I thought it was screamingly funny,” Katter said, explaining the video had been shot last week before the massacre. He was apparently unaware it had happened until after the video’s release on Wednesday.
“I don’t know what’s going on the media, I don’t watch television, I get to bed at midnight every night, I don’t read newspapers,” he said.
“There’s an election on,” an incredulous Koch interrupted.
“I repeat to you that I get in every night at midnight and with all due respect, I watch a movie if I switch the television on, not that I do,” Katter replied.
“You’re trying to steer it into political correctness, my friend, and Australia is not for sale: that’s the message we carry, and comic and humour is not in your pantheon.”
The interview ended acrimoniously, with Koch assuring Katter he was “the last person to be politically correct”.
On Thursday Malcolm Turnbull called on Katter to apologise and withdraw the video.
“The advertisements were in the worst of taste and Mr Katter should apologise and withdraw them,” the prime minister told reporters in Sydney.
Finance minister Mathias Cormann, earlier described the advertisement as unfortunate.
