With the news yesterday that the Do-nothing Malcolm government has taken Tony Abbott’s bait and recommitted to high immigration, we can officially mail out invitations to forthcoming marriage of Pauline Hanson and Peter Dutton.
The future Mr and Mrs Trump lack charisma, couldn’t sell water to a dying man in the desert and their agenda is unearthed from some dark forgotten soil. But in today’s polity these are assets and they’re rising inexorably towards power in Australia as the Do-nothing Malcolm pursues self-destruction.
These two now represent the glowing future of Right-wing politics in Australia: a chip fat-spattered racist and a refugee-bashing bovver-spud. Joined in marriage as if by the hand of some bored and banal lower level demon.
The marriage is already consummated in WA. The forthcoming election has the Liberal Party trading preferences with One Nation in the lower and upper houses against its own Coalition partner, the Nationals. If it succeeds in limiting electoral damage to the Liberal Party, or gets them re-elected, then One Coalition will be in power.
It’ll shift next to QLD. There the Trumps have a very real chance of rolling Labor to install Australia’s first fully-fledged bogan administration. A One Coalition premier is entirely possible.
Such state polling will have an electrifying effect federally. Do-nothing Malcolm is already dead man walking but these are the triggers for a leadership spill. The Coalition Loon Pond is now bigger than its progressive wing and it will roll over the centre of the party like a ravenous herd of zombies: biting, gnawing, proliferating.
As this happens, current Coalition partners, the Nationals, will fall apart. Leading light, Jabba Christensen, will jump to One Coalition, others will surely follow.
Renegade loon, Cory Bernardi, may even be lured back with the promise of a radiating trogolodyte agenda. One Coalition will rebirth Right-wing unity as all semblance of progressiveness is driven screaming from the party.
Pauline Trump will not end up with the top job, but One Coalition will adopt her platform. The Loon Pond rump controlling Do-nothing Malcolm is most of the way there already on climate change and energy, as well as social policy. They need only to replace the empty suit with Peter Trump, add discriminatory immigration cuts, nudge away from neo-liberalsim and, voila, One Coalition is birthed nationally.
But will the polity really fall for this abjectly pre-enlightenment twin-headed gorgon?
No, of course not. Anyone that reckons aligning One Coalition with its “base” will also win it power is just as loony as they are. It will hand a centrist Labor power on a platter.
But what it will also do is supercharge loons of the Right across the country. It will formalise a new White Australia policy platform including banning Muslim migration. This will rend the social fabric, threatening national security as the local Islamic community is isolated and stops giving up its angry young men. Obviously this can become self-fulfilling prophecy for One Coalition.
Moreover, and here’s the rub, as I wrote last week, the challenge of holding onto power in a hostile economy is now the number one problem for government in Australia. Income and wealth distribution is structurally broken. Labor will need to fix it to hold office but the remedy will still cause more short term pain. In such an economic context, eccentric political outcomes become possible.
To avert this, Australia’s progressive parties need to outflank the Trumps on immigration today, before they take power and wedge them. They need to move to “managed immigration” policy platforms that cut the intake to 70k people per annum, explicitly repudiating any role of race or ethnicity. All this would do is align the intake with other multicultural democracies like Canada. It is hardly a radical suggestion. Indeed, given present levels of immigration have clearly outpaced the polity’s capacity to cope, to persist without change is the extreme position.
The Greens can do it on the basis of sustainability and boost the refugee component.
Labor can do it under the aegis of reforming the corrupt visa system and protecting local incomes.
This will rob One Nation of its raison detre and may even spoil the Trump’s marriage in advance. Normalised levels of immigration will also help Labor hold onto power as deflationary pressure comes off lower end wages, inflationary pressure comes off house prices, and infrastructure can catch up in the cities. Labor can then set its dirt-digging attack dogs loose on the One Nation crazies and force the party back to the lunatic fringe where it belongs.
If it does so, it can rule for a decade as it restructures the economy. It not, then the marriage from Hell will be upon us.
