Federal MP Bob Katter was speaking outside the Queensland Parliament with state members of the Katter’s Australia Party about his intention to attend a March For Australia event this weekend.<\/p>\n
“I think he did it unwittingly and without any malice, but regardless, it was a deeply personal issue to him.<\/p>\n
“And it’s quite a complicated personal issue that I’m not willing to explain publicly, and he didn’t take the cues and kept pressing and provoking and generated a more aggressive response than most people are used to.”<\/p>\n
Channel 9 has backed Bavas \u2014 labelling Bob Katter’s claims of racism as “baseless and offensive” while calling for a public apology.<\/p>\n
Mr Katter said he did not believe an apology would be forthcoming from his father.<\/p>\n
“I’d just say they’re not going to get it,” he said.<\/p>\n
Robbie Katter, who sits in the Queensland parliament as the Member for Traeger, said he was not worried the incident would impact his political standing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Robbie Katter says he thinks it’s unlikely his father will apologise for the outburst. (ABC News: Emily Dobson)<\/p>\n
“If it does, then I don’t want to be in politics,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We should have a right to react if we’re being pushed and coerced and provoked, and I guess we work things out from there.”<\/p>\n
Lebanese heritage a ‘matter of fact’<\/p>\n
In a recent episode of Australian Story, Bob Katter’s sister, Geraldine O’Brien, referenced their grandfather, who had migrated to Australia.<\/p>\n
She said the family story was that he came from Lebanon when he was in his early teens.<\/p>\n
Mr Katter acknowledged it was a “matter of fact” that his family had Lebanese heritage.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bob Katter’s sister, Geraldine O’Brien, told Australian Story their grandfather emigrated to Australia in his teens. (Australian Story: Marc Smith)<\/p>\n
“But that’s a lineal sort of approach to that question,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That engenders, do you identify as Lebanese, and certainly there’s a lot more heritage to just Lebanese in our family, and that’s as much as I will say about that.<\/p>\n
“But I will say that was my aunty talking. It wasn’t my father, and he might have an entirely different perspective on how he’s viewed and what his background is.<\/p>\n
“He’s certainly entitled to have that, and our family has been here over a hundred years, and we call ourselves Australians.”<\/p>\n
In a statement he issued on Thursday, Bavas said he had never experienced that kind of reaction from an elected representative in his 20 years in journalism.<\/p>\n
“I was trying to ask a question about the value migrant Australian families, including the Katters and my own family, bring to this nation through shared values,” he said.<\/p>\n
Channel 9’s executive director of news and current affairs, Fiona Dear, said Nine fully supported its reporter.<\/p>\n
“We stand by Josh Bavas and will continue to report without fear or favour,” Ms Dear said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queensland MP Robbie Katter has defended his father, federal independent MP Bob Katter, after a heated exchange with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[32308,2322,43,9281,44,94,701,71583,63268,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-102602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-bob-katter","tag-federal-politics","tag-headlines","tag-immigration","tag-news","tag-qld","tag-queensland","tag-queensland-parliament","tag-robbie-katter","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}