It’s all so predictable! For the love of Pauline:
A fight over Pauline Hanson’s swelling political power has split the Coalition…
Furious Nationals are turning on their Liberal colleagues over a preference deal in Western Australia that puts One Nation ahead of the Nationals, raising fears of similar pacts across the country that would weaken the Coalition…
In a sharp contrast with Nationals who are attacking One Nation, the Prime Minister said he would continue to deal with Senator Hanson “constructively”, while Scott Morrison declined to rule out a preference deal with her at the next election.
Barnaby Joyce warned of retaliation over the WA deal to put Senator Hanson’s party ahead of the Nationals on the state Liberal ticket, as he met his federal colleagues last night to consider the threat to their party.
Angry at the treatment from their Coalition partners, some Nationals are blaming Liberal cabinet ministers, including Mathias Cormann and Michaelia Cash, both WA senators, for helping to seal the agreement in Perth last weekend.
Liberal sources in Perth said yesterday that Senator Cormann had been pivotal in securing the deal with One Nation and had been present on Saturday when the Liberal Party state executive voted unanimously to approve the arrangement.
They said Senator Cormann, the most powerful Liberal powerbroker in WA, stepped in after the deal was “going nowhere” for several weeks. It is believed he met Senator Hanson at least once to hatch the agreement.
Senator Cash is also understood to have taken Senator Hanson and her chief of staff, James Ashby, to dinner when she visited Perth in December…
Victorian Nationals MP Andrew Broad said he was surprised by the lack of Liberal voices speaking out in support of the Coalition yesterday, warning they could not form government without the Nationals. Tony Abbott fired a warning shot at Mr Turnbull over the issue, saying “my view is you know who your friends are and you stick with them” in preference deals.
Until the Coalition dumps Turnbull and outflanks One Nation then the Nats will get sidelined. Only once the Coalition replicates John Howard and becomes One Nation will it be able to undermine and destroy it by subverting its loony candidates. All parties have “dirt units” that can be very effective at using human foibles to ruin credibility.
That the Nats are up in arms shows you just how out of control the party is. Clearly there has been no communication between Do-nothing Malcolm and the Bursting Tomato. There is no political strategy here beyond a desperate courtship of Pauline.
Labor is not much better, via Andrew Bolt:
And Domainfax:
In the Senate on Monday, Pauline Hanson claimed the Queensland Labor party approached her with a “grubby deal” on preferences. However, the State Secretary of Queensland Labor said this was “absolute crap”.
Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie scoffed at the “dirty filthy deals” when she appeared on the ABC’s Q&A on Monday night. She said One Nation does not have the resilience to be a “power entity”.
“What the Liberal Party up there in Federal Parliament will do to keep One Nation on side, honestly … it just blows me away,” Ms Lambie said.
She said the Nationals in Western Australia were a “puppy dog” that the Liberals had taken back to the pound.
“And they think they’re getting something better,” she said. “I’ll tell you what, when that bites them, come back and see me.
“You’ve gotta be able to sustain that power and that resilience and that resistance, and quite frankly I don’t think One Nation has it.”
The Coalition is a leaderless rabble so they’re response at least makes sense. Labor spent the day defensively rebutting stupid allegations when it should simply get on with major reform of the broken visa system which implicitly cuts immigration and will position it nicely to weather the storm.
Neither party seems to have a clue about how to handle this. Immigration is dead. Deal with it.
