I must admit, I'm surprised people never mention the fact that Katter was a minister in the Queensland state parliament under Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Other people have had their careers tarnished for much more minor associations with Joh.
It sounds like this might be more about differences in cultural expectations of decorum in public speech than differences in presence of certain political views, necessarily? I've read some of Katter's statements on various issues before; someone that coarsely spoken would never last at the national level in US politics. But frankly, look at some of the stuff Michele Bachmann says about homosexuality for example--it might not be quite as cartoonishly crass as the "walking backwards" thing, that's not really the American style, but to me it's just as disturbing.
I would agree with this. I think often the big difference is the role of religion; in US politics, it is acceptable (and even expected) that you tie your political views to religious justification, while in Australia, that is generally political suicide. That's not to say it isn't invoked, e.g. see the expressions of Catholicism by some MPs in the parliamentary debate over RU-486, but any politician who does so has to walk a fine line and they often try to express their religious conviction as a manifestation of "traditional Aussie values" (rather than the reverse of traditional values being derived from religious conviction). So you end up with this case of discriminatory opinions such as Katter's on homosexuality that appear to have no justification to dress them up or make them more palatable; they are naked bigotry, expressed shamelessly. I'm not sure if that's more honest or more disturbing.
As for the crass style of expression, I think that Katter, and to a lesser extent Barnaby Joyce, would not be half as popular - especially not amongst their constituents - if they weren't such "straight talkers". They may be a cartoonish joke for the rest of Australia, but for their constituents, they are exactly the desired kind of person: hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners, the-city-is-against-us, speak-before-you-think, other-similar-hyphenated-phrases. They talk in colloquialisms and make gaffes. In an era when people are campaigning against the "fake Julia", Katter and Joyce are exactly the kind of men those voters want - and Katter in particular is obviously far too simple for it to be an act. He's the real deal.
Incidentally, I think Joyce has gone and blown whatever moderate left and centrist support he had, on the basis of his past willingness to cross the floor. When the Coalition was in power, this was a man viewed favourably by the centre-left as somebody who could potentially come across to the other side for the big causes (especially opposition to privatisation). Now he's painting himself very firmly into Katter's corner.