Knuth eyes sixth term
FORMER first grade rugby league player and Queensland Rail tradesman Shane Knuth is an old- school politician in the mould of Tom Burns, Bill Eaton and Bill “Jed Clampett” Glasson.
There is no university degree. There is no having worked as a staffer for a state or federal minister. There are no $ 200 shirts and $ 100 silk ties. There are no highfalutin’ words and no sentences that start with “last week when I was in Provence …”.
It would be more like “when I was shootin’ pigs up on Koolatah on the Mitchell River …”
There are the jeans, the work shirt with his name above the pocket, the boots and, of course, the KAP hat, and there’s a slight Aussie drawl.
If he wins the new seat of Hill on Saturday, he will enter his sixth term as a member of the Queensland Parliament. That alone says something.
People see him as being earthy, as being one of them.
He’s done things with his hands, worked out in the heat with steel and has the burly build of a front rower.
Those sorts of things go down well with farmers and country people.
They like it when they know that the politician they are talking to understands the rigour and physicality of their everyday lives.
People who know him well say that when it comes to politics he’s as cunning as an outhouse rat. He can sniff the political breeze and know instinctively which way to jump.
People on the Tableland and in his old electorate and now abolished seat of Dalrymple will say that he listens.
Some will also say they will vote for him because they like him but they will also admit they don’t think that with only one other party colleague, Robbie Katter, in the State Parliament, that he can get much done.
Mr Knuth is working hard to win Hill. He faces a serious threat from the LNP’s Mario Quagliata. Mr Quagliata is serious about winning as well.
At 5pm on Tuesday, Mr Knuth was walking backwards and forwards in his best KAP clobber across the bridge in Atherton, waving to the occupants of each car as they drove across. His V8 parliamentary Landcruiser with his name emblazoned on the doors was parked strategically on the verge near the bridge. It was simple, but effective, peakhour campaigning.
Mr Knuth won’t have it that he can’t get things done in his electorate. He’s laying claim to a $ 70 million government commitment for an Atherton Hospital upgrade. He’s claiming a revamped hospital in the farming town of Dimbulah on the northern Tableland.
“The old one is like miner’s cottage,” he said.
He mentions the Mission Beach breakwater, the Tully grandstand and there is the KAP party’s all- consuming crocodile management plan, known as the Safer Waterways Bill.
“We will be putting people’s lives ahead of the lives of crocodiles,” he said.
Mr Knuth played 97 A grade games for Redcliffe. He played A grade for the North Queensland Marlins.
How confident is he feeling about the election? He answers, saying that as a footballer he always goes into a game confident.
“But, you always know in the back of your mind that the game isn’t over until the ref blows the whistle,” he said. a