An Australian lawmaker yesterday defended an election campaign video depicting him as a cowboy shooting two political opponents as “screamingly funny,” despite criticism in the wake of the Orlando nightclub killings.
Independent lawmaker Bob Katter, known for his opposition to selling off rural land to foreign interests, on Wednesday posted the parody of an old-style Western on his social media accounts, ahead of national polls on July 2.
It shows two men in Labor and Liberal party T-shirts putting an “Australia For Sale” sign on some outback land and shaking hands.
The video then switches to Katter changing the sign so it reads “Australia NOT for sale.” He is subsequently seen blowing smoke from a cowboy pistol while grinning, before the camera pans to the two men lying dead.
“I thought it was screamingly funny. Political correctness council are out there,” Katter told ABC after its appropriateness was questioned just days after 49 people were killed by a gunman who opened fire at a gay club in Florida.
“I don’t know what’s going on in the media. I don’t watch television, I get to bed at midnight every night. I don’t see newspapers,” Katter told the ABC.
He told Sky News that “satire has been one of the most powerful weapons in Australia’s history.”
“Australia’s got a sense of humor and we need to keep it while our country is being sold off,” he said.
The video, which has had almost 100,000 views, split opinion online and Katter’s gay half-brother Carl was not impressed.
“It’s a total disregard for the loss of lives that we saw in Orlando recently, which is still having a huge impact on my community which is the LBGTI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and/or intersex], but also the greater community,” he told broadcaster ABC.
Labor Senator Penny Wong said she was “always uncomfortable with political ads which choose to, even in a satirical sense, make fun of violence.”
There have been growing concerns among the public in Australia about valuable agricultural and mineral assets passing into foreign hands, but it has yet to feature prominently in the election campaign.
Last year, the government introduced a regime to improve scrutiny and transparency around foreign ownership of agricultural land, including a new foreign ownership register.
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