Australian Party targets 20 seats: Katter

SYDNEY (AAP) - The newly created Australian Party will bloody the major parties in Queensland's next election and could steal more than 20 seats, party founder Bob Katter says.
The long-serving north Queensland MP joined Queensland Party founder Aidan McLindon on Tuesday to announce the merger of their two groups. Both agreed Mr Katter's experience and Mr McLindon's youth presented a "formidable combination".
Mr Katter said there was "a lack of logic" in parties with the same policies fighting each other.
"Surely we should be punching away at the two parties in there," Mr Katter told reporters in Brisbane.
"If you think there's not going to be blood on the carpet, you're making a terrible, bad mistake."
Mr Katter, who will be Australian Party's federal leader, said it was "more than feasible" that the new party would win more than 20 seats at the next state poll, due by March 2012.
He vowed to be a force beyond regional areas, promising to campaign the length and breadth of Queensland wherever good candidates could be found.
"We will be winning seats in Brisbane," Mr Katter said.
"I can tell you that right now."
Mr McLindon, who will be state leader, said some in his party had been disappointed with the merger and some had described Mr Katter as "a cut snake".
But he said Mr Katter had stood the test of time and he was proud to be working with him.
"Cut snakes last for 39 minutes," Mr McLindon said.
"This good man's lasted for 39 years, so he must be doing something right.
"He speaks from the heart and he gets it right nearly all of the time."
Mr Katter, a federal MP representing the electorate of Kennedy since 1993, founded the Australian Party in June. Mr McLindon's Queensland Party was set up last year.
Liberal National Party (LNP) leader Campbell Newman said he was concerned the new force could see Labor returned to power and asked voters to support the LNP.
"Mucking around with minor parties and independents will lead to the same disastrous situation we have at the federal government at the moment," he told reporters on the Gold Coast.
Premier Anna Bligh said it would be interesting to see the impact of the new party, which had been borne from disillusion with the conservative LNP.
"Every election is a competition for votes, and the more parties that are out there, the harder it is to win the hearts and minds of people to your own team," she told reporters in Rockhampton.
But she predicted voters would stay with the major parties.
Griffith University's Dr Paul Williams said the real momentum at the next poll was with the LNP.
"The Katter-slash-McLindon outfit's best bet in order to make big inroads quickly is to poach sitting members or candidates ... of both parties, particularly the LNP, and maybe one or two independents," he told ABC Radio.
"Early talk of winning 20 seats at the next state election is simply not going to happen."
The two leaders will now approach independents to ask if they want to join the newly merged outfit.
The pair said they'd make major announcements every three weeks and would announce some surprise candidates in the next fortnight.