The man on whom the Turnbull government may have to depend to form a minority government in Canberra wants to restrict migration to just three groups, with Muslims left off the list.
Having been asked about Senator-elect Pauline Hanson’s inflammatory remarks about Muslim migration, Mr Katter said migration should, ideally, be confined to Sikhs, Jews and Middle Eastern Christians.
“I had a Sikh in his turban and a Jewish assistant rabbi, with his beard, on either side of me,” he said, during a meandering 50-minute media conference on Thursday.
“These are persecuted minorities, there’s no doubt – 84,000 Sikhs were killed in one year in India.”
But Mr Katter then painted a picture of the Jewish experience in Australia that suggested the persecution could follow them to these shores.
“The Jewish people, their children go to school under armed guard in Australia, it’s a national disgrace. That is the reality,” he said.
“If you are Jewish in this country, you have to send your kids to school with an armed guard and, from my experience with Jewish people and I’ve got some Venetians in the family tree – we sort of love our money.
“I wouldn’t be spending money on armed guards unless I really thought I had to.”
Jewish schools in both Sydney and Melbourne have had to hire armed guards in recent years.
Mr Katter said he wanted to “deracialise” the migration debate and look at it from a purely economic point of view.
Read the article by Cameron Atfield in the Sydney Morning Herald.