KEY independent Bob Katter has offered strong support to the union campaign to abolish the building industry watchdog and also offered an impassioned defence of unionism and the right to strike.  

In the latest sign of some of the unusual alliances that the hung federal parliament is producing, Mr Katter, a former National Party MP, yesterday joined forces with the left-wing Electrical Trades Union state secretary, Dean Mighell.

Mr Katter spoke for nearly an hour to about 200 ETU members at the Royal Children's Hospital site in Parkville and attacked the powers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which can force workers to be interrogated.


''Being an ex-union rep, briefly in my younger days, I know what it's like if you've got someone looking over your back and terrorising you and intimidating you,'' he said.

''There might have been some good reasons for its [the commission's] introduction at some stage, but it seems to me that there are now some very excessive elements there.''

Unions are pushing Labor to abolish the commission, which was introduced by the Howard government, and their best chance will come from July when the Greens get the balance of power in the Senate.  

In the lower house, the votes of the independents will be crucial, with Greens MP Adam Bandt supporting the union push.  

In a colourful and fiery address, Mr Katter said he wanted farmers and workers to join forces to fight a common enemy - deregulation and free trade. ''I never thought I'd have to speak this way because when I was your age trade unionism was so powerful in this country and people respected the principles, and then we had this economic rationalism rubbish, which is just like a cancerous disease,'' he said.

''There is no doubt that we should be on the same side of the fence; we need collective bargaining as farmers and speaking as a worker we need collective bargaining just as much as the farmers do.''

In a well-received address, Mr Katter spoke of his time as a young man working as a union delegate at Mount Isa Mines and expressed his strong support for the arbitration of industrial disputes, a position that both major parties firmly reject.

Mr Katter was also dressed for the occasion, swapping his trademark wide-brimmed hat for a metallic version, imported from the US, and presented to him by Mr Mighell.

The pair have collaborated previously against a free-trade agreement with China.

While Mr Katter's ''rural socialist'' views are anathema to Labor and the Coalition, his choice of political hero, Ted Theodore, a former Queensland Labor premier, suggests he would have been comfortable in the Labor Party of the 1930s.

He said Mr Theodore, who was also a federal treasurer, had done much for workers. ''In 1905 in Australia, one in 31 of us that went down the mines never came back up again, we were treated like animals,'' he said.

No, that is a colossally stupid idea.

The building industry unions have shown themselves to be incapable of functioning without the supervision of a 'watchdog' entity....many times in the past.