One Nation is thriving despite the abhorrent stunts
Senator Pauline Hanson has always chosen to be a joke to pursue her career as a populist politician. Her latest trick was taking the wrong cosplay costume from her closet in the Senate office and walking into the room wearing a KKK robe and burka instead of a hoodie.
Either outfit would work. Courting the publicity that follows his shows is his main game. It enrages many, amuses some, and reflects the emotions of a few; but this group is growing.
Things are looking up for Pauline Hanson as One Nation tops the polls.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Hanson’s One Nation received 6.4 percent of the vote first choice votes In the federal elections, just seven months later, Australian Financial Review/ Redbridge/Accent Research poll shows party hits record 18 percent. It was last published in the Resolve Political Monitor magazine. reporter in september, was at 12 percent; reached double digits for the first time.
Populist politicians such as Hanson, Bob Katter, Mark Latham and Barnaby Joyce, who appear committed to One Nation after resigning from the National Party on Thursday, portray themselves as the voice of ordinary people angry against elites. But the one constant is how little they have accomplished for their constituents and constituents.
No matter who they claim to represent, the truth is laughable and/or reprehensible: whether or not to encourage people to do so Join Australian rallies in March protesting immigration; is calling the slaughter of crocodiles; angering LGBT advocates; or lounging on a footpath in Canberra after a parliamentary drinking session, with resulting publicity on news programs and TikTok creating recognition among voters who prefer celebrity to politics when ticking their preference boxes.
These populist politicians only thrive thanks to the preferential voting system, and with the exception of Katter, who runs a sort of intergenerational family politics business in Far North Queensland, they are generally relegated to the upper houses of Australian parliaments. One Nation has a peripatetic history of winning and losing a few regional seats, but has never managed to achieve the bullish roar of widespread support in major urban centres.
Hanson was a practitioner of political spectacle long before Donald Trump perfected the trade. But the success of the US president’s inexhaustible trickery has emboldened Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist UK Reform Party and Hanson.
Hanson distracts with demonstrations while promoting abhorrent policies: He endorsed Australia March rallies, knowing the organizers had ties to neo-Nazi and white nationalists/supremacists. His parliamentary colleagues kicked him out of the Senate for seven days this week.
It has been stopped before: John Howard swept it off its feet in 2001 when One Nation threatened the Coalition by promising to get tough on immigration and border control.
This time the bush is their habitat, the natural prey of disaffected Coalition voters, not Labor supporters. The coalition, and especially the Liberal Party, have no choice but to return to the moderate center to recapture lost territory. Chasing Hanson and his disgruntled right-wing wing down the rabbit hole is a journey into political oblivion.
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