Bob Katter's campaign video seeks to portray him as a politician ready to fight for Australians.
Bob Katter's campaign video seeks to portray him as a politician ready to fight for Australians.
Australian politician Bob Katter has refused to back down from a controversial election video despite growing criticism and being asked to remove it by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Katter's Australia Party ad begins with two men representing the ALP and the LNP erecting signage that reads "Australia for sale".
Katter, 71, pulls out a Sharpie and writes the word "NOT" in big black letters.
Katter says Australia is not for sale.
Later, he's seen blowing smoke from the barrel of a gun while the bodies of his two opponents lay face up on the outback dirt.
Katter, who heads Katter's Australia Party and represents the electorate of Kennedy, previously called the ad "brilliant", "screamingly funny" and "satire". He said viewers should not take the advertisement literally.
However, Katter's gay half-brother told ABC that the video was highly inappropriate, given the recent mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, while Turnbull said Katter should remove it and apologise.
"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, but also the greater community," said Carl Katter, the ALP's candidate in the Melbourne seat of Higgins.
Turnbull said: "The advertisements were in the worst of taste and Mr Katter should apologise and withdraw them."
Channel Seven host David Koch asked Katter if it was insensitive to keep the ad running given the massacre in Orlando.
"Is this just insensitive and a bit stupid in the same week as the Orlando massacre?" Koch asked.
Katter said the reaction to the video was like the "Spanish Inquisition" and showed how politically correct Australia had become. "Let's dismiss that immediately," he said.
"As far as I was concerned, it was cleared a week or two weeks ago. That emphasises the hypocrisy of the attacks being made here."
The two attempted to speak over each other for the remainder of the interview, with Katter claiming he "quite frankly would have no idea" about the shooting.
"I don't know what is going on in the media. I don't watch television. I get to bed at midnight every night," Katter said.
"You didn't know there was a shooting in Orlando?"
Koch responded, exasperated. "Oh, come on."
Earlier this week, Katter told Sky News it was a "funny ad to get attention".
"Australia's got a sense of humour and we need to keep it while our country is being sold off," he said.
I don't know what is going on in the media. I don't watch television.
"The political correctness brigade ... they're out there and they are trying to cloud the issue."
It's not the first time Katter has raised eyebrows with his election advertising efforts.
In 2011 he released an anti-same sex marriage advertisement targeting then-Greens leader Bob Brown and then-Queensland Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman.
