Scummo thy name is stupid, via The Australian:
Scott Morrison has moved to stop the flow of Coalition votes to One Nation, attacking the party as “abhorrent” and urging disaffected conservatives to support the government ahead of Pauline Hanson at the upcoming election.
In a direct pitch to One Nation voters, the Prime Minister invited them to vote for a “party of government’’, acknowledging that they had drifted to the minor party because of “frustrations on a whole range of issues’’.
The reason why is as obvious today as it has been since Malcolm Turnbull breathed new life into Pauline Hanson, also at The Australian:
Scott Morrison is facing a new but foreseeable test of his leadership.
It is hard to see how the Coalition can get to 50 per cent plus one in an election without a strong flow of preferences from One Nation.
Why would they save Scummo’s sorry skin now? What has he done for them? Nothing.
The answer to this conundrum is as obvious today as it was when we first mooted it years ago. ON is a single issue, anti-immigration political party. Everything else pales into insignificance next to this basic truth. The LNP simply needs to cut back mass immigration. Halving it would be about right. If were done purely on economic grounds it would have united crush-loaded city slickers with country bogans and ended ON overnight. Not only would it have united the party and repaired its base, it would have directly attacked Labor on its two greatest strengths – housing affordability and weak wages.
The failure to understand this basic politics cost Malcolm Turnbull his job at the hands of disaffected QLD MPs. When Scummo and company seized power that was the one chance to fix it but he went the other way, flooding Australia with cheap foreign labour to protect his corporate and property mates, hosing off a state revolution against migration numbers, while using Howard’s exhausted boat people abuse “bait and switch”.
So now the LNP will pay at the ballot box. No point whining about it. Scummo did it to himself.
The irony is that immigration cuts remain the only viable path for an LNP recovery in opposition. They will either do it or they will die the death of division that afflicted Labor for twenty years when it faced a similar split in its base through the reign of Robert Menzies.
