Survival of bush is at stake: Katter

Independent North Queensland MP Bob Katter says the very survival of rural Australia will be at the heart of talks to decide the next government.

The member for Kennedy is one of three returned independents, all former Nationals, being courted by Labor and the Coalition after they failed to win government in their own right.

The man who has held Australia's third largest electorate for 17 years insists he will happily form government with either party, despite wearing his disdain for senior Nationals on his sleeve.

"If it's up to me, then the gong goes to whoever's going to give us the right to survive and I couldn't care less whether they're the Labor Party, the Liberal Party or the callithumpian mongoloid party," he told the ABC on Sunday.

But one thing is clear. Both parties had better come to the table willing to make some important concessions for the bush.

Mr Katter says Kennedy, Tony Windsor's New England and Rob Oakeshott's Lyne have all suffered from the major parties' neglect of rural Australia.

He says voters in the three seats have felt the effects of chronic under-investment in critical services - especially health - agricultural imports, soaring living costs, and shrinking personal and property rights.

"We are fighting for our survival," he says.

The three MPs will head into this week's negotiations well-armed. Before voters went the polls, each had prepared a wish list, hoping the result would pan out as it has and that they would get to go shopping.

Before the poll, Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor nominated decent broadband services in the bush as a central issue. On Sunday, Mr Katter said publicly funded broadband was on his list too.

Some analysts say that will favour Labor, whose promised $43 billion national broadband network will deliver high-speed internet services to 93 per cent of the population, wiping out the disparity between the bush and the cities.

The coalition has promised a $6 billion broadband plan, which it says is very much focused on regional and rural Australia.

Mr Katter said the three would vote as a bloc on who should form the next government, based on issues critical to all three electorates.

"We have not been given the right to survive by either side of parliament," Mr Katter wrote in a statement he prepared predicting independents could come away with the power to decide the government.

"Now it might just be payback time."

He said the issues of most importance in Kennedy were health, including the appalling state of publicly funded dental services, and rises in the cost of living.

He said other burning issues were stopping banana, beef and other agricultural imports, bringing back agricultural subsidies and tariffs, and stopping the erosion of personal rights and freedoms.

"We're not allowed to boil the billy in Queensland without getting a permit," he said.

There was disdain on Sunday for senior Nationals, including leader Warren Truss and Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce, who Mr Katter said had launched personal attacks on him during Saturday's election coverage.

"I thought the provocations by Barnaby Joyce and Warren Truss were not very clever," he told Sky News.

"The National Party leader made a personal attack upon me and I think if Tony Abbott was watching he would have had a very big difficulty with what was said and Julia Gillard would have had a smile on her face."

That said, Mr Katter said he would not let personalities decide the government.

"Personality is not going to be introduced here. Not from my side."

"We go to the table with a blank sheet of paper."