The day after the Queensland election and premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was still short of the seats she required for victory but there was no doubt the KAP and its state leader Robbie Katter had a good night.
Starting the night on Saturday, Mr Katter was optimistic to win three to five seats and at the end of the night he had two with another still in play.
Mr Katter put his victory down to dissatisfaction with the two major parties and the KAP will now work as a bloc to represent rural and regional Queensland.
“Labor may have won a small majority but they didn’t venture out west at all in this election and the LNP went out west once,” Mr Katter said.
“There is an endorsement for us to represent rural and regional areas of North Queensland and we’ll form a bloc in parliament and reach out to the other cross-benchers to work together.
“The hard work just begins now.”
Mr Katter won the new seat of Traeger comfortably with The North West Star calling his victory at 7.20pm on Saturday.
As of 10am Sunday 56.5 per cent of the vote had been counted and Mr Katter had 9099 votes (64.37pc) with Labor’s Danielle Slade second with 2715 votes (19.21pc), the LNP Ronald Bird third with 1194 (8.45pc), Independent Sarah Isaacs fourth with 538 (3.81pc), the Greens’ Peter Relph fifth with 323 (2.29pc) and independent Craig Scriven last with 266 (1.88pc)
Fellow KAP member Shane Knuth won the new seat of Hill based around the Cassowary Coast region of Innisfail and Tully, where he grew up.
Mr Knuth sits on 46pc, more than twice his nearest challenger from the LNP.
In Hinchinbrook KAP candidate Nick Dametto is in an intriguing four-way battle with Labor, the LNP and One Nation.
Mr Dametto currently sits in third place ahead of Labor and behind One Nation and if the split goes his way he might claim victory on preferences.
Mr Katter said it was hard to see how Mr Dametto could lose from this position.
“He will get the preference flow from Labor ahead of the LNP,” he said.
Overall Labor is on 40 seats, still seven shy of a majority in the 93-seat parliament.