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It's the mid-1980s and Bob Katter is getting a burger from Dave's Hot Dogs stand at a service station in north Canberra when a critic shares his thoughts. The young, drunk, university student noticed the Bjelke-Petersen minister – in Mr Katter's words, the Queensland government's "arguably third, probably second" ranking minister – and gave it to him. "'I hate you rich, arrogant …' then he used a number of obscenities, and I said, 'Mate, what sort of house do you live in?' " Katter said. "What's that got to f---ing do with you?" the student said. "Just a question, do you live in a brick house?" The bemused student responded with "of course I do", and with further prodding confirmed it had a tiled roof, opening the door for Mr Katter's rebuke. "I live in a fibrolite house with a galvanised iron roof, and I don't think people like you, with your arrogant, bloody rich houses should be spitting on people like me." In 2016, the 71-year-old leader of Katter's Australian Party will return to the national capital this month after his ninth election win in the north Queensland seat of Kennedy, but said the people of Canberra had still not warmed to him. And after spending a third of his year here for 23 years, the feeling is mutual."I really do find it unfriendly, [people] don't smile and laugh at each other and if you crack a joke people look at you like you're a Martian," he said. "I find it a very soulless place, everything is franchised and corporatised." In perhaps the ultimate snub, for the past five years he has spent his nights across the border at the self-described "affordable", 3.5-star Comfort Inn International Airport hotel in Queanbeyan, also favoured by Andrew Wilkie. "I have got to say that Queanbeyan is more personable; if you say hello to a person they smile." It's a little different when it comes to food, with his favourite eating spot Kingston Italian restaurant La Dolce Vita. He also praises the nearby Thai Cornar, which he credits with the best tom yum goong soup in Australia. When it comes to rugby league, the Raiders also get the thumbs-up. But the man with the big hat from the land traditionally known for big farms and mines has moved little on stances that put him well to the right of the Canberra public. It's 27 years since Mr Katter famously said there were no homosexuals in north Queensland (one of his younger brothers, Carl, is gay, as was the Liberal National Party candidate in Kennedy this year). He said he had been confronted twice in Canberra about his position, but retains the view the nation-leading push by the ACT government to pass marriage equality laws reflects a cloistered city. "Coming from an area where we lost probably 100,000 jobs in the collapse of coal mining and metal markets, our poor old cattlemen doing away with themselves at one every two weeks, and here they are running around and want the right to get married," he said. "It gives you an impression that they've got nothing better to do with their time, they don't have to worry about their job, their house being foreclosed on, about being kicked off their bloody farm." Despite at least four years of consistent federal public service cuts, Mr Katter said Canberra was a protected species on jobs, although he acknowledged it was a "tough" decision whether to send the staff of the pesticides and vet medicines authority to Armidale, as the Coalition has promised. He admitted public servants were condemned by politicians without their full skills being used or tested. "The problem lies equally with the politicians. The number of times I've spoken to a public servant in the last 18 months you could count on the fingers of one hand," he said. "In the last Parliament I was back in the electorate working on things every available second I had, but some of that time would have been much better put interfacing with public servants and at the very least have them understand that all agriculture in this country is dying, and when [deputy Prime Minister Barnaby] Joyce runs around saying it's not he is deadly wrong." But however much he says he dislikes it, the veteran MP, 10 years older than Father of the House Kevin Andrews, has no plans to retire and leave Canberra. "The way I see it, my country is in real peril and there's got to be some people in Canberra who are patriots still, [who] look with shock and horror at the decision by Mike Baird to sell the electricity industry, and the handing over of the taxi industry to a foreign corporation [Uber]," he said. "The team needs me. I'm the only one screaming that the emperor's in an invisible suit of clothes, 'Can't you see this free market, no one else on earth has done it? "

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