You young nippers are probably too young to remember Old Bob Katter, and the Nationals under Joh, – more a cult than a political party. It was difficult and sometimes hostile territory. The biggest thing we had going for us was that the regional papers more readily print press releases from minor parties, something we can probably still use.

Are you sure that we can’t do better?

I kept in touch with John Zube for a while — who was quite active in the Workers Party. He came to Canberra for one of our libertarian dinners and shared some of the material ans stories of old workers party campaigns.

The Progress Party formed out of the Workers Party after some sort of some sort of internal upheaval. I am not sure what it was about, but there was a lot of vitriol from the few who remained in the Workers Party. Singo was a founding member of the Progress Party.

I had been interested in the Workers Party but was persuaded to join the Nationals which was a bad mistake, as I soon realised that I had little in common with them. I resigned on the formation of the PP and joined it. I think that it was in the 77 state election Bill Runge achieved 10%+ of the vote in Gympie, and we had other high results as well.

Our main support came from Qld, NT, and WA, with NSW relevant but I can’t recall much activity from the other states. In Qld we were the main movers, with the National Executive based here, WA had some good people, but seemed to contribute mainly inspirational messages from Amway adds, while the Territory had a very active branch until two successive presidents were ruined by selective government action, after which the rest up there got the message.

When I worked in the territory I spoke to their president at the time, who told me to avoid making waves, as since he had adopted a lower profile, the Chief Minister, Porky Everingham would speak to him. We were supposed to meet, however he didn’t turn up, I think he read the paper and saw what I had said in it. I don’t hold it against them as they, not me were bearing the full brunt of state attempts to destroy them.

We folded a few years later, rather than accept that the Government had a right to register political parties. We refused to register and ceased to exist as a recognised party. We were probably in retrospect a little too idealistic for our own good.

Most members moved to other parties and I have lost touch with them, but I am still in contact with a couple of them;

Viv Forbes was National Secretary, and has a farm in the Brisbane Valley and remains a committed libertarian.

Ron Kitching we all know. A guy named Kelly Cromby and a couple of others are still around.

On a more positive note, it should be remembered that the Katter family have a dynastic hold on this seat, and the National Party was at the time very hard to displace in their homeland.

J.M.Fryar (PP) 2103 (3.7%)
S.L.Hadlow (ALP) 20194 (36.0%)
R.C.Katter (NCP) 33744 (60.2%)
Informal 1021
Estimated two-party preferred: NCP 63.1%, ALP 36.9%

I ran a pretty light campaign, as I couldn’t be spared from my work at the time, and the electorate was about 5 hours drive away.

The point I am making is that we can do it. There were no internet based comunications back then, so letters, press releases, etc were much slower.

I have to apologise for misinforming you in my Blogger Profile, It was Kennedy not Capricornia, and old Bob snuck in by about 31,000 votes. It was a fair while ago, and I lived in Capricornia at the time.