Paul Kelly (and the Coalition) go the big capitulation today on One Nation:
Things have changed since 20 years ago. Hanson is now a tough, cunning, focused politician, no longer the hopeless amateur. Anyone doubting this should watch her Monday night interview with Andrew Bolt on Sky, where a confident Hanson made clear her plans to turn her protest movement into a substantial mainstream force on the political Right. She may not succeed but the climate is favourable.
It is still easy to denigrate Hanson for many of her wacky ideas. But the message on Sky was her strategy: constructive dealing with the government; exploiting Labor/Green rejection of bills that vests her with more opportunity; a ruthlessness to promote One Nation at the cost of both major parties; and her skill at turning attacks on her back on to her opponents. She has media cut-through in spades.
…Her support in the country is more broadly based, too, and looks more durable. Her most potent threat is to the Coalition vote as revealed in the recent Newspoll, where Hanson’s vote was on 8 per cent nationwide. It is eating into the Coalition primary vote that was reduced to a dismal 35 per cent compared with 42 per cent at the 2016 election.
…As a rule, One Nation functions as a political vehicle that transfers votes from Coalition to Labor because the Coalition loses more primary votes to One Nation than it recovers through the preference system. This leads to an inescapable logic: the need for the Liberals to work towards an arrangement with One Nation on preferences. The LNP in Queensland has no realistic choice but to seek a deal with One Nation before the state election because it looms as an institutional force on the Right.
Our Paul passes this off as a “transactional” embrace. He’s wrong. It is transformative. It is simple arithmetic fact that Malcolm Turnbull cannot win power with One Nation rising, as the last Newspoll shows clearly. There is no repeat of John Howard’s immigration “bait and switch” on boat people available this time. The Coalition’s only chance is to outflank One Nation, which means taking on its policies and then destroying it. My own view is that Malcolm Turnbull is unable to do this given his history and electoral brand is everything that One Nation is not: progressive, globalist and liberal. If he tries, the Coalition loses anyway as a flip-flopping and valueless ’empty suit’.
For the Coalition to have any chance – and it has little – it needs Tony Abbott back today. As damaged as he is, imagine for a moment the power of fear in his hands as he:
- prosecutes the anti-renewables agenda backed by the challenges in SA;
- prosecutes an anti-immigration agenda that goes head-to-head with Labor’s trump card, the negative gearing reforms (while defending the latter);
- prosecutes a pro-US agenda as north Asian politics deteriorates;
- brings the Coalition back together via a complete loon pond takeover.
It would render One Nation obsolete and send Cory Bernardi to the woodshed. It would shake Bill Shorten to the core.
Yes, the Coalition would still likely lose but it would have a chance, the only chance it has, and in today’s politics that’s all there is.
