Journo ‘shut up’ barb vintage Hanson as she makes Adelaide ‘second home’
Another week of One Nation headlines has Mike Smithson saying that with Pauline Hanson in town “you never know where the next barb will be fired”.
A former prominent Liberal politician told me recently that part of a decision to get out of politics was based around the looming threat of One Nation.
This person was seeing a real-time, worldwide trend towards dominant conservative politics and didn’t like where it was headed.
Almost everything this person feared in helping make that decision to leave has now come to pass and it doesn’t look like slowing down.
In fact, Redbridge and Accent Research figures shows One Nation could win up to 59 seats if a federal election was held today.
That would shake Canberra’s seat of power to its very foundation with the possibility of 37 seats taken from the Coalition and 16 from Labor, resulting in a minority government.
Every state would see blue and red seats, as well as the Nationals, decimated by a sea of orange.
Pauline Hanson makes no apology for her big picture view of life getting even bigger.
She’s convinced that voters proudly vote for One Nation these days knowing that it is not a wasted vote.
One could argue that all the warning signs, which worried the former Liberal pollie, came to a head at the South Australian election and were then repeated in the federal by-election seat of Farrer where One Nation continued its wild ride.
Victoria is the next target, and all indications are of a further strong showing, if not another wipe out for the Liberal Party, in particular.
Peter Malinauskas seems undecided whether to demonize One Nation or try to bring its members into the fold of co-operation and communication.
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He had a fair slap at them and the Liberals as a “uniparty” over their joint hard line on not lifting the current moratorium on fracking for unconventional gas in the state’s south-east.
But says he is also all ears if they want to sit down with him and chew the fat on policies.
Until now, visiting party leaders have treated Malinauskas and his views with respect and restraint even if they don’t agree with his politics.
They see him as a smart operator with considerable influence locally and on a national stage.
Why poke the Mali bear if you don’t need to?
But Pauline Hanson, who almost seems to be making Adelaide her second home, doesn’t mind having a go and appears to have encouraged her local disciples to do the same wherever possible.
From trying to hijack a country cabinet meeting in the southeast to preaching on the steps of state parliament, One Nation is continuing to echo the angry voice of its constituents.
It’s engaging and entertaining to be in Hanson’s presence as you never know where the next barb will be fired.
Even her advisor telling a seasoned Canberra journalist to “shut up” as he wound up a media conference was enough to push most other political issues that day off the front page.
Then Hanson’s unflattering words, vaguely picked up by a television news camera, as she left the media gathering with Barnaby Joyce also rocketed to the top of the bulletins that night.
She may or may not have been referring to the female journalist involved, but it made for vintage Hanson news fodder.
The former Liberal I spoke to also expressed reasons for One Nation’s dramatic rise in SA and the Lib’s decline over the past decade.
In this person’s view it largely comes down to bad timing and plenty of bad luck.
No Liberal is happy with where the party is at locally and nationally.
In SA, they have only held power for a miserable four out of the last 24 years.
How do you lose power and public confidence after just one term?
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Covid-19 was listed as Steven Marshall’s unlucky event which cost him a second term.
I disagree, as Marshall stole the news cycle for the best part of 2021 with daily media conferences flanked by his two lieutenants Professor Nicola Spurrier and Police Commissioner Grant Stevens.
Labor barely got a look in for weeks and was starved of political oxygen.
But the former Lib claimed Marshall’s influence wasn’t seen as productive during that time.
He might have been the public face of controlling Covid, but it didn’t get him anywhere.
He was seen as the conduit to the other experts rather than someone who was steering the ship.
The 2022 election result would reflect that.
The other bad luck, as described to me, was then selecting a party leader who failed to inspire his colleagues or achieve anything of note.
I’d told that same Liberal two years ago that David Speirs was never going to be an inspiring leader and that Ashton Hurn would be far more suited to work her way into the top job.
Speirs’ disgraceful departure from the party resulting in drug supply convictions was also considered as a double dose of misfortune over which the Liberals had no control.
So now that Hurn is in the rightful position as leader, the latest bout of bad luck is the timing of One Nation’s ascendancy.
Had they not existed, Hurn may have retained the party’s MP numbers she took into the recent election which then could have consolidated her personal popularity for a decent crack at Labor in 2030.
Like it or not, the reality is that she’s unlikely to ever become Premier.
The Liberals probably won’t see any light at the end of the tunnel until at least 2034 by which time Hurn and all other current Liberals are likely to have had enough of the desolation of Opposition.
Hurn wouldn’t agree with my assessment, nor would I expect her too.
By the same token, you make your own luck in politics or any other area of life, so don’t expect sympathy or favours.
Miracles can happen but I haven’t known of one for the past 2,026 years.
Mike Smithson is weekend presenter and political analyst for 7News.
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