by PAUL COLLITS – PAULINE Hanson is currently hoovering up dissident conservatives – and South Australia is her next electoral target.
Former SA Senator Cory Bernardi is back – this time with One Nation. Barnaby Joyce is her most recent big capture.
- The world has changed beyond recognition.
- Pauline Hanson’s times may suit her. As Joh’s didn’t.
- It is a different game now with much higher stakes.
In 1987, I was working for a Liberal Senator in Queensland. John Howard was leader of the Liberal opposition. There was a coming election.
Things on the Right of Australian politics were a little unsettled. Bob Hawke was supreme. Labor was flying high.
NOWHERE
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the maverick Queensland Premier, the Dane from Dannevirke (New Zealand), decided he wanted to be Prime Minister.
Or his Party boss, Sir Robert Sparkes, did. Suddenly, there was a “movement”. Joh for Canberra was born.
No one figured out how it would all work. Nothing much came of it. John Stone was elected to the Senate (a great outcome). The Libs lost another election. Howard survived for a time. The Coalition endured. Joh staggered on in Queensland to his ultimate demise. Humiliated. Disgraced, alas.
Fast forward to 2019, I had just returned to Australia from a stint across the ditch, planning a quiet retirement.
I was persuaded by the then emergent Australian Conservatives, led by Cory Bernardi, to stand in a State election. We got nowhere.
Cory went to Sky News for a time. Then he disappeared from view. The Australian Conservatives vanished.
Loh and behold, Cory Bernardi is back in the frame. This time with a One Nation hat. Barnaby Joyce is the current big capture.
George Christensen is on message: “If you still think Australian politics is set in concrete, you have not been watching closely enough.
“Former high-profile Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi joining One Nation matters because it lands right after the defection of Nationals MP and former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce.
“That back-to-back sequence changes how politicians read the room. One switch can be waved away as a personal decision. Two close together starts to look like a pathway.”
And once a pathway appears, the next question becomes unavoidable. “Who’s next to come across?”
Will Australian politics replicate Britain, where big name Tories have jumped ship to Reform UK? How does 2026 Australia compare with 1987 and Joh for Canberra?
This was the last great insurgent putsch.
Joh for Canberra was quixotic. It was a Queensland Nats’ fantasy. It came to nought of course.
Australia in the roaring twenty twenties is a different country from then. They had John Howard. We have Sussan Ley.
But, more importantly, the world has changed beyond recognition.
We have had 9/11, Muslim colonialism and terrorism, the internet, Chinese economic imperialism, WEF globalisation and stakeholder capitalism.
COLLAPSE
Not to mention COVID tyranny, digital fascism, a collapse of fiscal discipline and the arrival of the UniParty State.
Then there is outsourcing of public policy to the unelected, the takeover of the Australian conservative Parties by gay technocrats, the embrace by the old Left of cultural Marxism, and their abandoning of the working class.
In short, we now have the ultimate opportunity for insurgent politics.
Pauline Hanson’s times may suit her. As Joh’s didn’t.
Joh’s canvas was very limited. His vision was just as limited. He was, as it turned out, a small-time State politician with control of a system of petty corruption and some Right-thinking political instincts, suited to the times.
It is a different game now with much higher stakes. With existential threats to the polity that simply didn’t exist in the 1980s.
But, there is a problem.
The electoral system is still the same as it was in 1987. Insurgent politicians still need to win lower house seats to form a government.
The excitement of defections to One Nation is all about us.
Pauline Hanson is now talking about possible One Nation PMs. This is, frankly, ridiculous.
Before PMs, we need One Nation MPs. We need to walk before we run.
Let us hope that the disparate insurgents now seeming (at last) to be coming to some sort of understanding of the need to work together, itself very welcome, keep their eyes on electoral reality and the lessons of history.
They might start by looking back to 1987.PC
One Nation needs to work for more Senate seats. The Lower house is really not an option by next election.
Pauline is brave and persistent. Her candidate selection in the past was not good but she is the only politician in Australia to aggressively put Australia first.
She has to get House seats; anything else is no good; if the hopeless, venal libs lose seats and the Teals, alp or greens pick them up then it’s all for nought. And we can’t put it past the libs to punish Pauline by directing their preferences to the parties destroying Australia.
The other problem is the electorate in Australia is fat and lazy; and despite the damage caused by alarmism the punters are still spoilt. They have to wake up at the same time Pauline has to figure out a way of getting the votes moving away from the stupid, corrupt libs.
It’s the ignorance of voters in where the preferences go and how the media covers an election. Not the best outcome Im afraid.