Katter and pregnant wife crash-land plane in outback Qld

Robbie Katter says he and his pregnant wife are “rattled” but fine after the outback Queensland MP crash-landed his plane in Mount Isa.

The Member for Traeger, who says he’s racked up about 700 hours flying his propeller-driven light plane, regularly takes to the sky to service his enormous electorate that spans nearly 430,000 square kilometres in the state’s north.

The typically candid leader of the Katter’s Australian Party and son of federal MP Bob Katter, was tight-lipped on the incident when contacted by this masthead ahead of an investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

But he said the second crash-landing in his 1985 Mooney M20 in about three years had traumatised the pair, with wife, Daisy, expecting to give birth to the family’s fourth child in the coming months.

Katter’s parliamentary chief-of-staff Cameron Parker was also onboard during the incident at the Mount Isa Airport, with all three escaping unscathed.

The future of the Mooney M20 is in doubt, given it “doesn’t take much to write off a plane these days”, and the shaken outback MP says his flying days may also be numbered.

But he also said flying was an “integral” tool to visit communities in his electorate that borders the Northern Territory and is bigger than Italy, fearing the electorate will become larger again following an upcoming electoral redistribution.

Traeger is below the 10 per cent population quota that triggers a review of electoral boundaries, while 14 seats, largely in the state’s south-east, are more than 10 per cent above quota.

“Yeah it’s risky [flying] but what other choice do I have with them looking at making my electorate bigger,” Katter told this masthead.

“Already it’s difficult to cover the territory even with the plane, so it’s a bit bloody ominous going forward.

“But we’ll find a way.”

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