by DAVID FLINT – DURING the 2024 Federal election campaign, to ensure there would be at least one common sense Party in the 48th Parliament, I suggested voters cast their first preference for One Nation and place the LNP ahead of Labor and the Greens.
With an election nominally due by May 20, 2028, there is no reason to change that advice.
- If she heads the largest Party in a new governing coalition, she would no longer be just a kingmaker.
- After all, the curtains there have seen and heard far worse than a bit of plain speaking from Queensland.
Given the Albanese Government’s shocking performance, Labor should be defeated.
At the same time, the One Nation vote can no longer be easily dismissed as just a peripheral protest; with its polling now eclipsing that of a fractured Liberal-National Coalition.
SURGE
It could well be a seismic surge.
Add their recent declaration of a readiness to govern – a stark contrast to the LNP, currently consumed by yet another round of internal spill motions and leadership squabbles.
With Pauline Hanson on first-name terms with Australians, One Nation’s rise could well reflect the fact that she is attracting not only disillusioned Coalition voters, but also Labor’s.
If the One Nation lead is now structural, the inexorable logic is that One Nation could become the largest Party on the Right.
If that is reflected in the election, convention suggests that Pauline Hanson – one of the few politicians who didn’t fall for the “fake politicians’ republic” – could well be the first person invited by the Governor-General to form a government.
The most tired trope in Australian commentary is that One Nation is merely a “Party of complaint” – a collection of grievances without a blueprint.
Despite little media interest, One Nation’s current policy suite reveals a sophisticated, popular and nationalist framework that addresses, with common sense, the very issues the out-of-touch two-Party duopoly ignores: immigration, housing, water, fake climate catastrophism about which Beijing is laughing all the way to the bank.
One Nation is also enabling constitutional change to be made directly by the people.
Water is a fundamental issue for this nation. During an Australia Day event hosted by the Institute of Public Affairs, the first two questions from the floor were, perhaps appropriately, about this very subject.
As Alan Jones rightly insists, Australia receives all the water it needs.
The problem is that too much falls in the wrong places. In other words, it is an engineering problem on which funds should be spent in priority over the vast sums of money massively flushed down the – no doubt gender-neutral – toilet.
But the chance of our having a decent dams program was killed off by a hair’s-breadth 4:3 High Court majority who licensed Bob Hawke, despite the Constitution, to stop Tasmania from building a dam – a decision our great federalist leader, Sir Henry Parkes, would find baffling.
While the major Parties treat the Murray-Darling Basin as an environmental problem, One Nation sensibly treats it as a national security issue.
Central to this is the revival of the Bradfield Scheme, a still visionary plan designed to capture the monsoonal floodwaters from major Queensland rivers and direct them into the Murray-Darling, thus drought-proofing the vast agricultural plains of the western interior.
Dismissed by earlier bureaucrats as too ambitious, it is today dismissed as “uneconomic” – the standard excuse for any project that involves moving dirt rather than shuffling diversity quotas.
One Nation’s “boldness” is best exemplified by its $90b Budget Savings Plan, demonstrating Pauline is prepared to wield the axe where the major Parties fear to tread.
ABOLISH
Apart from allowing the use of gas, coal and nuclear energy and ending renewable subsidies, electricity would be far cheaper under One Nation, which would also abolish the Department of Climate Change – an act which alone would save $30b per year.
The National Indigenous Australians Agency would also go – reclaiming $12.5b in wasteful, race-based grants.
Assistance could then focus strictly on individual economic need.
By ending the funding of invented “Welcome to Country” rituals and the ABC’s $600m inner-city bloat, Pauline is calling for a return to a colour-blind, unified Australian base.
The “complaint Party” label falls apart further when one examines Project Iron Boomerang.
As Will Jefferies, an analyst for the project, explained to me, this nation-building project linking Queensland’s coal with Western Australia’s iron ore via a dedicated transcontinental rail line is projected to create 40,000 jobs, transforming Australia from a mere quarry into a global steel powerhouse.
This industrial strength is the foundation of One Nation’s Defence Policy.
One Nation demands an increase in spending (three to four per cent of GDP) to fund immediate strike capabilities and the compulsory return of the Port of Darwin to Australian control – a pragmatic alignment with a Washington that demands its allies “pull their own weight”.
As to the Party’s name, recall that the slogan of the Federation architects was “One Nation, One Flag, One People, One Destiny” – a slogan designed to forge a single national identity.
Sir Henry Parkes spoke of the “crimson thread of kinship”; today, One Nation is alone attempting to re-stitch that thread into a coherent national garment.
COURAGEOUS
Among other policies, there is a courageous total withdrawal from captured international agreements such as the Paris Accord, the United Nations and the World Health Organisation.
They also call for a mandated 90-day national fuel reserve to ensure we are never held to ransom by global supply chains, the replacement of school indoctrination with education and a return to the rule of law through banning the use of civil law to create criminal-style penalties, as in the Racial Discrimination Act.
Furthermore, the Party’s focus on cost-of-living is sharpened by a proposed 20 per cent cut in electricity bills through a return to baseload coal and a five-year GST moratorium on building materials for new homes.
These are joined by a permanent cap on net migration at 130,000 per year and a common-sense public ban on the hijab.
Asking if Pauline is “prime ministerial” suggests some self-evident barrier to her appointment. There’s none.
If she heads the largest Party in a new governing coalition, she would no longer be just a kingmaker – she’d be a serious contender for the Lodge.
After all, the curtains there have seen and heard far worse than a bit of plain speaking from Queensland.PC
Any vote for One nation will be wasted unless it is concentrated in the Senate and AT THE EXPENSE of the Greens. The Greens have no need of Lower House seats, as they have the whip hand in the Senate with an overall and constant 12-14% vote in most opinion polls over the last 20 yrs. Electorally, the Greens have run rings around Liberal and Labor with their pivotal seats in the Senate.
Pauline is following in the footsteps of Trump. Farage and Melei since the people have had enough of the left wing parties that have no idea on how the world works and also the old and tired so-called conservative parties that more and more are becoming meek behaving Labour-lite.
Bring it on. The Uniparty has had its day. Conservative voters are well overdue for political party with policies that better reflect their values. Time for a change, painful as it will no doubt be.
I tend to agree even as a long term LNP voter and supporter, probably now vote ON as I like great majority ON policies and positions, but with one defining and absolute caveat – no infiltration or influence or material lobby money from foreign interests in ON, notably Israel as I have seen images several occasions of Pauline wearing the Israeli flag – no thank you, no kissing walls or bending knee as we certainly don’t want to end up like America i.e. congress, finance, media etc. Time will tell and 2 years is a long time in politics.
You are subscribing to the Jewish conspiracy thesis.
So people of a particular broad religious background are cited as ‘controllers’. And the white Anglo Saxons? Celts? Arabs? Asians or Muslims? Christians? Hindus? Atheists? All have whole countries in their background and commercial successes. The Noble prize list has those of nominal Jewish faith disproportionately successful in the betterment of mankind. A spectacularly successful group of pan Euro origin has a homeland and contributes way above its weight. And tolerates no intrusion. I wish the same fof Australia.
‘ Hear Hear ‘