The Migrant Who Changed The Tide Of The Federal Election
THE MIGRANT WHO CHANGED THE TIDE OF THE FEDERAL ELECTION
Mr. Bob Burgess, the would-be politician whose racist remarks have embarrassingly turned the tide against his own party in the Federal Election, is the same man who once came up with a radical answer to coconuts falling on the heads of picnickers in the parks of Cairns, where he is a city alderman.
He suggested - seriously - that the Cairns City Council should employ trained monkeys to shin up the coconut trees and toss the nuts down to waiting council workers. Having had that idea ignored, bearded, British-born Bob has now handed thousands of potential votes to his delighted opposition Labor Party, calling Australian citizenship ceremonies ‘de-wogging’ events. In one stroke he introduced racism as an issue, hard on the heels of another British migrant, Labor’s own Graeme Campbell. Campbell’s outspoken views on multiculturalism earned him the sack by Labor’s Prime Minister Keating and now he is standing as an Independent. The National Party’s Burgess should - urges Keating - have the same fate, but so far he has had only a mild rebuke from his rather angry Leader.
Burgess, who speaks in a cowboy drawl peppered with laughter, made things even worse by giving his opinions on handouts to Aboriginal and Islander communities. If funding was reduced, he said, the only organisations to suffer would be hotels, betting shops and Toyota. It earned him a public snub from Opposition Leader John Howard, who arrived in Burgess’s home-town, Cairns, and refused Bob Burgess’s outstretched hand. Howard went on to say: "He is not my candidate and won’t win the seat." Burgess was unfazed. (He claimed Coalition Leader Howard realised there was a "silent majority" of Australians who shared his views).
As the National’s candidate for the sprawling seat of Leichhardt, Bob Burgess had gone on to talk to the travelling media caravan about women. He said he thought it was "rubbish" that women should have an equal share of seats in parliament just because they added up to 50% of the population. ‘What a load of absolute BS that is - the real men of Australia care about their women, they care about their issues and worries, they share their pain.’
I knew Bob Burgess as a young radio disc-jockey who worked hard for 13 years on tropical Cairns’ radio station 4CA, ("for twopence halfpenny" as he now says), peppering his shifts at the microphone with talk-back, his own sometimes zany opinions, studio interviews, poetry-reading and music, much of it country. He also plays the guitar, but not well, delights in passing on his homespun philosophy and often bemuses fellow city aldermen with his somewhat eccentric ideas to improve life in the city. If he gets into Parliament and has to quit the Cairns City Council, a dozen aspiring alderpersons are queuing for the required election in his Division.
Bob says he is a deeply concerned Christian, but abhors the concept "born again". ‘I have been a committed Christian since the age of seven,’ he said to me. I wondered what it felt like to have turned the campaign - almost-single-handedly - against his own party? ‘Well of course it is a responsibility. But I don’t want to add any further fuel to the fire. I am happy to talk to you about the future of the Cape York Peninsula, its possibilities; and about the real issues in Australia. But any kind of profile about me is likely to have pieces taken out of it by other people and twisted to their own political agenda; that’s the way it is; that is part of the game."
As if Burgess’s "de-wogging" jibe hadn’t done enough damage to the Opposition parties pushing to defeat Prime Minister Keating, a politician from their own camp then weighed in to defend him - and talked about "slanty-eyed ideologues" in the Green Movement. Bob Katter, National MP for Kennedy tried to explain later that his remark was a reference to zealots "whose eyes narrow and lips tighten", but even though he apologised, the double-whammy damage had been done.
Bob Katter has also been dubbed as eccentric by his opponents, as a "loon" by others, and most commonly, a maverick. When he was in trouble with his leadership on another occasion he said "maverick" actually hurt him.
‘Most certainly. The leadership of the Liberal Party and the National Party have done their level best to paint me into that corner. They have used the term continuously to write me off. But I have very strong ideas on how the country needs to be - and must be - changed in direction.’
Racism is the last issue Opposition Leader Howard wanted to be raised in the campaign. He is still deeply sensitive about the damage caused when it exploded around his head once before; he has spent a decade trying to live down his comments on Asian migration; he had suggested it might need reducing.
