Maverick Queensland MP Bob Katter is hopping mad Australian rabbits will no longer be used to make his beloved Akubra hats.
The country MP turned up at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday minus his signature Akubra hat, instead opting for a knitted green and yellow beanie supplied by the Tully and District Knitting and Crocheting Association for Cancer.
He was protesting Akubra's decision to solely use foreign rabbit fur in its iconic Australian bush hats.
Mr Katter says Australia is still gripped by a rabbit plague and he can't understand why local skins are being shunned.
The MP reckons he can often count 10 to 15 rabbits on his own street in Charters Towers, in far north Queensland, on any given day.
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Akubra says its needs about three million rabbit skins a year and on average 14 go into one hat.
"We still employ about 85 people in Australia and our hats are very much still Australian made and our profits remain here in Australia," chief financial officer Roy Wilkinson told AAP.
Up until the early 1990s Akubra used only Australian rabbit skins.
However, following release of the Calicivirus a large part of the Australian rabbit supply has been wiped out.
"We had two choices, we either closed or we sourced other supply," Mr Wilkinson said.
"So we went to Europe where all the big rabbit farms are."
This year it became uneconomical for the company to process both European skins and those from NSW.
The company, which has been operating for about 140 years, had been using majority European skins with a seven per cent local mix.
European suppliers had also started to arc up about all the hoops they had to jump through to satisfy Australia's strict quarantine laws and had been considering cutting off supply, Mr Wilkinson said.
Akubra will now buy European skins that have already been processed, minimising quarantine hassles.
