He stands up for the little guy, the capital “D” Deplorable, and this irritates the pants off the insiders’ club.

Members of this loathsome club include the Lib-Lab duopoly and assorted Left-of-centre Parties and their preferred media organs. Think Crikey, the New Daily and The Guardian.

POWERFUL

Marxists in short pants, many of them. And, God help us, he is a Christian.

A marked man, including for many in the “modern” Liberal Party. (These folks will find themselves the focus of attention for powerful forces like the Australian Christian Lobby in the coming campaign).

The usual epithets emerged, on cue. Rogue. Controversial. Maverick. And the rest. Michelle Grattan calls him a “pest” (for the Coalition).

Here is the ABC’s own headline: George Christensen to get $100k payout after defecting to One Nation and an unwinnable Senate spot.

The issue is framed, the narrative set. He won’t win a seat, and his motives are venal.

It neatly parks the real import of his recent stands and the values he represents – about as far from those of the ABC and its COVID-climate-woke cohort as you could possibly get.

The usual Leftist suspects were quickly joined in this endeavour by one Matt Canavan, LNP Senator and himself no stranger to controversy and the occasional floor-crossing.

“Deserter” was the charge. Coward. Shirker. Really? Canavan then, risibly, described minor Parties – who many, many Australians will surely vote for in a few weeks’ time – as “echo chambers”.

DUOPOLY

That’s right. You read that correctly. A member of the Lib-Lab duopoly described principled minor parties as echo chambers.

They do imbibe the kool-aid come election time, n’est pas? Classic wagon circling behaviour (as I have argued elsewhere).

Just to remind ourselves, here is the sequence of Christensen’s actions.

He served out his term as the LNP member for Dawson, elected under the LNP banner and (weirdly, perhaps) loyal to the end, despite his Party’s total abandonment of anything approaching principle and good governance.

Readers here will be familiar with the long catalogue of atrocities committed by these second-rate charlatans.

Yet George stuck with them, on a matter of principle scarcely to be found in the city of Walter Burley Griffin.

In his valedictory speech, he spoke frankly yet with restraint. He did the honourable thing, having been elected as a Member of the LNP.

Then he resigned from the LNP, as well he might. Then he said he wasn’t going to be voting for the LNP, possibly ever again. Another tick.

Then he announced he had joined One Nation. And then he announced he was standing for the Senate. At every stage, he gave cogent, indeed compelling, reasons for his actions.

I don’t see a “deserter” here. I see someone who recognises that he was surrounded in Canberra in the Party room by, well, deserters.

CAREERISTS

Canavan himself has done good things, has principles and an independent mind. Qualities in very short supply among his peers, who are almost universally careerists with a globalist, overclass-driven world view.

Almost to a man and woman, they have forgotten where they came from. They fawn over the values and agendas of the elites with whom they move, endlessly and effortlessly.

There isn’t a “safe”, woke position that they don’t suck up to. Hence, whatever his own merits, Canavan has no right to call his former colleague a deserter in view of the recent trajectory of his Party.

Michelle Grattan could not resist dredging up what she sees as the ugly Christensen past: “Christensen, 43, member for the north Queensland seat of Dawson since 2010, has been extended an extraordinary degree of tolerance by his colleagues over the years. His Party has treated him with kid gloves, despite some outrageous behaviour.

“So indeed did his electorate. Regardless of his spending nearly 300 days in the Philippines between April 2014 and June 2018 – which earned him the title “the member for Manila” – the Dawson locals gave him a positive swing of more than 11 per cent in 2019.”

SWING

Outrageous behaviour? Standing up for the people against the elites, refusing to play Canberra party games, voting in the House on principle, not power politics? Really, Michelle?

I’m just glad Grattan remembered the 11 per cent swing which helped secure Scotty’s “miracle win”.

Did they ever thank him for that? And George claims he was lied to by Coalition colleagues about policy. That lot honourable and Christensen dishonourable? No, the media types are wilfully wrong about this one. Unsurprisingly.

But hadn’t George just announced that he had retired from politics in Canberra? Yes, he had. He said that Pauline Hanson had asked him to run, and he agreed to.