Outcast thunders into election campaign

Australia's opposition leader Tony Abbott. Photo / Getty Images

Russell Wattie roared into Australia's election campaign yesterday, making no bones about his decision to stand as an independent for one of the six Queensland Senate seats up for grabs on August 21.

"There is a decided lack of people with grass roots history that have an interest in going up against the political forces that run our great country," Wattie said.

He has been a member of the Liberal Party for about eight years. He is also a senior member of the Outcasts Motorcycle Club and spokesman for the United Motorcycle Council of Queensland, one of a nationwide network of organisations opposing tough new laws against bikie gangs.

Known by the nickname "Camel", Wattie, 49, said Canberra was overfilled with lawyers, political staffers, public servants, union officials, judges' associates and barristers.

"We need to have people [there] with a background that is not the same as the homogenous group of politicians that we generally have," he said.

The Outcasts have been around since 1969, with chapters in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, outlining their ethos of brotherhood on the club website.

"We never forget our fallen brothers and run on old school ethics where a man's word is his word, and a handshake is worth more than one's signature or a bank cheque."

The club is one of 16 now belonging to the United Motorcycle Council, formed to protest anti-gang laws, help settle disputes between rival clubs, give bikies a say in the issues that affect them, and help break down "negative stereotypes".

Its website highlights quotes by such luminaries as the German philosopher Nietzsche and the American founding father and President John Adams: "Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws."

Wattie wants to take some of that spirit to Canberra. He acknowledges serving time for firearms, drug and kidnapping convictions, but says that has opened his eyes to the need for reforms.

Wattie also says he has worked a lifetime as shearer, truck driver, boilermaker, rigger and crane driver, and for 11 years ran a small business providing specialised skills and equipment for the pulp and paper, timber and mining industries.

Apart from "fundamentally flawed" anti-gang laws, Wattie's priorities include the rights of small business and the road transport industry, and the need for a standard set of road laws across Australia. In that at least he has an ally.

The Australian Trucking Association is making a strong election pitch for a similar commitment by the main parties to national heavy vehicle regulations, and greater roads funding.

So far, roads and transport funding have not surfaced above the leaders' campaign horizons.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard was having enough trouble yesterday, with yet another boatload of asylum seekers intercepted in the Indian Ocean keeping attention on an issue dogging Labor's campaign.

Her delay in releasing a new climate change policy is also hurting: a poll found that 82 per cent of voters in New South Wales wanted immediate action, with only 10 per cent supporting Gillard's policy of waiting for an international agreement.

Tony Abbott's campaign continued to be bogged in the dangerous political morass of industrial legislation, with the Opposition leader unable to extract himself from claims that he intends taking the nation back to the WorkChoices laws that helped bury the Coalition Government in 2007.

But he did have a taste of celebrity worship. Abbott was mobbed by dozens of schoolchildren at a Lutheran College after promising to increase education tax refunds for their parents if he wins government.