'They used to sacrifice human beings': Katter blasts shark protections in Hunter visit

Far North Queensland MP Bob Katter has labelled shark protections as "paganism" during a surprise trip to Port Stephens, calling for the aquatic predators to go back on fish and chip shop menus.

Mr Katter was in Lemon Tree Passage on Monday, meeting with shark fisherman Joel Nancarrow and Mission Beach fishing charter operator Gerard Pike to discuss an "explosion of bull sharks" on Australia's east coast.

Mr Katter joined a chorus of politicians calling for a shark cull after several fatal shark attacks mostly attributed to bull and great white sharks.

Last month Michael Jensz, 39, was spearfishing at Kennedy Shoal, about 40km offshore from Mission Beach and Caldwell in far north Queensland, when he was attacked by a suspected bull shark.

Leah Stewart, 34, is also in a critical condition after being mauled by a suspected white shark on June 13 off Coogee beach.

So far in 2026 there have been nine shark attacks in Australia with four fatalities.

Mr Katter spoke with ABC Newcastle radio about the visit.

"Probably the best shark man in Australia resides at Newcastle and we had Gerard Pike who is probably the best guy in Queensland," he said.

Mr Katter said there was no need for discussions.

"You always watch out for interfering with nature, but there's something going wrong here," he said.

"The number of bull sharks both in NSW and in Queensland has exploded and nobody knows why."

Mr Katter said he had heard many anecdotal stories from fishermen describing catches taken by sharks.

"Gerard Pike told me they were hauling in a barramundi and attached to the barramundi was a bull shark and then three bull sharks had taken a bite of the shark that had a hold of the barramundi.

"That's four bull sharks in a tiny little area around that tiny little boat."

Mr Katter called for a restoration of shark fishing.

"Shark fishing is banned in Queensland and effectively banned, I would say, in NSW," he said.

He claimed Australians have been catching sharks for 200 years.

"Then suddenly we are not catching sharks, so then obviously there is going to be an effect out there," Mr Katter said.

He said that even if there was an explosion in numbers, "that wasn't the point".

"The point is you put a shark's life above the life of a human," Mr Katter said.

Mr Katter described that idea as "paganism".

"They used to sacrifice human beings to the river gods in Egypt, they sacrificed human beings to tree gods in Germany and Northern Britain," he said.

"When you put the life of a human over the life of an animal, then you, my friend, are psychologically sick and need some help."

When asked how far we go to eliminate risk to human life, Mr Katter said he was just asking for a return to the natural order of things.

"For the last 200 years we have been eating shark. If you go into a cafe 20 years ago and ordered fish and chips, the fish you would of got was flake, and that is shark mate."

When pressed about what a cull may look like, Mr Katter said he needed more time to digest the information from the people he had met.

Mr Katter claimed that Australia was the only country on earth that effectively banned fishing.

"A thousand million people go to bed hungry every night, right, and there is a moral dimension on this," he said.

"You greedy self-serving imbeciles in Australia, whilst people are going hungry, you won't let fishermen take a shot now.

"When you go fishing, the sharks take your fish, fishermen put out 20 hooks and they've got 20 fish and then there's no fish.

Speaking on his own Wisdom Mongrel Patriot Pubcast, Mr Katter said "they are allowed to kill us but we aren't allowed to kill them."

"What sort of weird world do we live in here?"

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Carrall, Lynette Anne
1950 - 2026

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