One Nation
About fifteen years ago I spent an inordinate amount of time at One Nation meetings.
The organisation was formed at Sydney’s iconic Rooty Hill RSL, where the parmigianas hang off your plate, and where Pauline Hanson made her first appearance as the party’s national leader before an adoring throng. The adulation was repeated across Australia, at the Gympie Town Hall and Caloundra RSL, in the logging communities of Gippsland, the pensioner enclaves of Bermagui and Batemans Bay.
One Nation received a hefty one million votes at the 1998 election. Its support came from disparate sources – blue-collar voters who disputed the free trade consensus between the major parties, oldies yearning for a whiter Australia – but the political ballast of the party’s support came from tragedy and its aftermath, the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, which prompted John Howard to implement a national guns buyback just two months into his prime ministership.
Continue reading "How Australia disarmed everyone except the crims" »
Yesterday, Pauline Hanson’s umpteenth attempt to climb out of the political grave ended in failure. But only just.
If NSW Labor had not extended Legislative Council preferences to the Greens Party, Hanson would be sitting on red leather for all of the next eight years, availing herself of parliamentary privilege to once again inject her poison into the Australian body politic.
The fact is, Labor preferences elected a Greens Party candidate over the top of Pauline Hanson.
Continue reading "Red, Green and Pauline: How Hanson was held back" »
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Carol White says:
Luke Foley is ok. Read more »
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James Darby says:
Luke Foley: You write “........ herself of parliamentary privilege to once again inject her poison into the Australian body politic.” Had you described the Greens as ‘socialist tools with the plan to engage Australia in a World Government that will remove property rights and enslave all in poverty’ your statement… Read more »
Pauline Hanson today again pleaded: “They’re picking on me.”
She lost her bid for an eight-year sinecure in the NSW Upper House, the plushest retirement home in Australian politics, and has to blame someone.
The fact that the Labor Party, the Liberals, the Nationals, the Greens, Christian Democrats, Shooters and Fishers didn’t run dead for her was a sign of conspiracy.
Continue reading "So long, Pauline, and thanks for all the fish…" »
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Suzy says:
Bwah!! She lost and now she says the voting system is unfair. I am over people whining because they did not win. The fish started stinking a long time ago. Get over it and move on. Read more »
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Gek says:
It’s true, Hanson did get the highest number of votes of any single candidate - 20,004 in fact, an astonishing 0.49% of the total vote. So with a first past the post voting system the first candidate elected would have been someone who 99.5% of people did NOT vote for.… Read more »
The NSW election was limping along with numbing predictability, like a circus missing one of its three rings, when the most persistent name in politics emerged to make the spectacle complete.
Pauline Hanson has decided not to emigrate to Britain as she declared last year, to not abandon bids for election as she had vowed several times.
She has decided instead to ignore her total absence from political debate in NSW and run with a bunch of buddies for the State Upper House.
Pauline is back, and finally that missing clown ring has been restored to the campaign circus.
Continue reading "Hanson is back, and the circus is complete" »
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Thommo the Enlightened says:
What a load of bollocks. No wonder no one listens to the pretentious types any more. Always trying to make their position sound hoity toity - well you’re full of shit and I can smell it from here. And guess what - Hanson is almost in. Priceless Read more »
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Tanya says:
Unfortunately, Pauline is motivated by racial hatred that is borne of her personal psyche and experience. She is not able to contextualise it on a social, economic or political level because she is devoid of that level of understanding. Therefore it translates to – these people migrate to Australia and… Read more »
On the map below are some of your suggestions for an alternative new home for Pauline Hanson following her decision to emigrate, following a call to complete this sentence: Pauline Hanson should move to (location) because (of this reason).
Click on the Pauline markers to see the various suggestions or you can see a larger version of the map here.
View Pauline Hanson should move to ... in a larger map
Some of the highlights are reprinted below. Further suggestions welcome in the comments, and we’ll update the map with any highlights.
Continue reading "Antarctica, ‘cos it’s white: ideas for Pauline’s new home" »
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Jeff Mueller says:
No actually Brad, I have a standard Australian accent, and my comment was about the way in which Indian call-centres are instructing their workers to match their accents to their target groups. How you think youuknow what I look like I’ll never know, though of course, that’s not your real… Read more »
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Pete L. says:
I think it was quite a few more than that, James, at least in Queensland. I remember when she first became ‘big’, all sorts of random people from various walks of life would say things like ‘She’s just saying what we think’. And she did, in my opinion - right… Read more »
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