One Nation is the Coalition’s doom:
One Nation’s decision to preference against sitting MPs cost the Liberal National Party any chance it had in the Queensland election, gifting Labor the Brisbane seats that turned the result.
On Saturday, Pauline Hanson’s supporters did exactly what they were told and followed the how-to-vote card, making the One Nation vote a lose-lose proposition for the LNP.
The Hanson effect explains why the LNP lost a quartet of key mortgage-belt seats in Brisbane even though the ALP base vote in them was mostly below what it was in 2015. Latest counting gives Labor 42 seats, LNP 37 and Katter’s Australian Party two, with 12 undecided. To win a majority, 47 seats are needed.
There’s a mock panic underway:
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has effectively ruled out doing any deals with One Nation at the next election and federal Queensland MPs are calling for the Liberal-National Party merger to be either scrapped or loosened as the Coalition grapples with the outcome of Saturday’s state election.
Almost every federal MP or Senator from Queensland believes the LNP should either be demerged, or the Liberals and Nationals allowed more autonomy, so they can appeal to their respective constituencies and repel One Nation in the regions while reconnecting with city voters.
…Attorney-General George Brandis warned a decade ago that if the Queensland Liberals and Nationals were merged, it would create a vacuum for a third party in the regions, which has been filled by One Nation. Senator Brandis indicated on Monday that the LNP had to reconsider a de-merger.
“The LNP is going to have a very honest discussion with itself…as to where non-Labor politics in Queensland goes from here,” he said.
“There does need to be an honest, frank forthright discussion among the leaders of the LNP about future direction.”
So, where is it? Not here:
Eric Abetz is not a poet. But there was poetry in the senator’s prose on Monday as he completed his transformation from conservative standard-bearer to counter-cultural revolutionary.
…And so it is Senator Abetz finds himself waving the (non-rainbow) flag for minority rights, beating back against the tyranny of the moral majority. He does so in the name of the “substantial” 38.4 per cent of Australians who voted “no”, whose views cannot be “obliterated from the public discourse”. He does so for the army of disgruntled “yes” voters who feel betrayed by the imminent assault on religious freedom. And he does so for the 20 per cent of Australians who would now “arouse from their slumber” and go to the barricades for God and country.
Or here:
Malcolm Turnbull is under pressure to allow a commission of inquiry into the banks after rebel Nationals MPs secured the numbers in both houses of Parliament to establish their own inquiry.
Queensland Nationals senator Barry O’Sullivan, who has driven the process, said he was happy for the government to reverse its opposition to a bank probe and take control of the process.
Otherwise, it would happen anyway. It is understood Senator O’Sullivan and Mr Turnbull were planning to hold talks but as of Monday night, the government was standing firm.
…In a blow for Mr Turnbull and his cabinet, Queensland Nationals MP Llew O’Brien told his colleagues on Monday he would support the bill in return for a change to the terms of reference, which was readily agreed to.
Or here:
Barnaby Joyce has signalled a push by the Nationals to defy the Turnbull cabinet and embrace a banking inquiry — a move that could force an embarrassing policy backflip or risk leaving the government humiliated on the floor of parliament.
The Australian understands Mr Joyce believes the Nationals will “most likely” decide to support Queensland senator Barry O’Sullivan’s bill for a commission of inquiry at a partyroom meeting next week. Support for a banks probe would split the Coalition and increase pressure on Malcolm Turnbull to take ownership of an inquiry or face the prospect of Coalition MPs crossing the floor and voting with Labor and crossbench MPs.
Or here:
NSW Nationals will push Premier Gladys Berejiklian to build a coal-fired power station in the Hunter region using proceeds from the $2.6 billion sale of the Land and Property Information service.
Ms Berejiklian announced on Friday that $2.3bn would be spent on Sydney stadiums — using the proceeds from the sale of the LPI service — but under the agreement on asset sales with the Nationals, one-third of sale proceeds needs to be spent in the bush.
The Restart NSW fund, topped up with money from the sale of the state’s electricity and port businesses, as well as NSW government windfall gains, is distributed two-thirds to the city and one-third to the bush. Deputy Premier John Barilaro is said to have raised the issue of a potential publicly funded coal-fired power station or a public-private partnership at a cabinet meeting this month.
Energy Minister Don Harwin and other Liberals are said to have spoken against the proposal.
At that meeting, the Premier pledged to hold a cabinet meeting specifically to address energy to discuss the proposal.
“The Nats want our share of the LPI funding to go to a coal-fired power station,” a senior NSW Nationals source said.
Nor here:
“You don’t do it by becoming One Nation lite, you do it by taking the fight up to them,” Senator Birmingham told Sky News.
Mr Christensen’s fellow Queensland LNP MP Warren Entsch said Mr Christensen was wrong. Rather than grovel, he should explain to voters why they should stick with the LNP.
“What he should be doing is explaining,” he told ABC radio.
“I don’t think that, you know, going out and apologising to one opponent or others, a general apology for, you know, is appropriate.
“He’d be far better off reaching out to his electorate in its total and saying, well rightly-oh, you know, these are the reasons I’m doing this.”
All wrong. All bluff. All spin. All bull.
One Nation is a single issue party: immigration. Unless you address that, you don’t address it. Everything else is shits and giggles and will doing nothing to turn the fortunes of the Nats.
John Howard knew it. He became One Nation lite. He used ON as his political and social outrider, channeling all of it into a deeply irrational hatred of sodden refugees. It so infuriated the Left that it rendered them impotent for two elections as their wowserish mewling built Howard into the titanic strong man of Australian politics.
Who’d have thunk that a contemporary Coalition so driven by politics, so empty of anything resembling values, so driven by vacuous self-interest, given clear direction by Brexit and Donald Trump, could not draw this simple, unavoidable conclusion?
Cut immigration or die.
It needn’t and shouldn’t have racial overtones. Cut the permanent migrant intake to 100k, still 50% above the historical average and generous. But enough to do just what it did in New Zealand handing the Coalition a policy underpinning for:
- housing affordability;
- wages growth;
- environmental protection and eastern city amenity;
- national security.
The perfect wedge into Labor and the Greens and fatal for One Nation.
