What’s all this 15% increase in One Nation voting all about?
Pretty spooky, but no need to wet the bed about it. Pauline will never be the PM, barring the US Marines invading and installing her into that position.
Our system of compulsory and preferential voting lends itself to the election of centrist governments; indeed, the recent surge in far-right votes will only lock Labor into power for the foreseeable future.
Alas modern Labor is a very conservative party, and what progressive changes they will bring will only be incremental, as their compliance with far-right US foreign policy and our continued role as a free resource dump for transnational corporations is a given.
As for One Nation itself, as you may recall, when Pauline first put aside the deep fryer to take up the dog whistle of semi-literate racism, her party gained a few seats in the Queensland Parliament.
Whereupon they almost immediately dissolved into a foul traitorous gravy of internal disputes – as most of them went independent and lost their seats at the following election.
They’re a party of projectionists and blamers – and their policies are the policies of division; where they blame the victims, project their own guilt onto the softest target and deny the hard science of climate change – and so their failure in the long term is virtually assured. The problem is the damage they do in the meantime.
How do their politics gain any credence in first place?
Their voters are a heady mix of disaffected working and lower middle-class people thriving on super-charged disinformation funded by self-serving billionaire mining backers.
Their numbers grow at the edges of our society where government services are thin and overcrowded, where unemployment is large and in communities where migrants, due to their lower socio-economic status, have taken up residence.
These depressed socioeconomic regions are a perfect petri dish to grow One Nation’s message of anti-intellectualism, racial intolerance and climate change denialism. A message whose impact is funded by billionaire mining magnates like Gina Rinehart and given potency though the use of individually tailored misinformation packages provided by Palantir on social media.
Please note – regional NSW fits this description. Nimbin is far from immune, as several conversations with locals has shockingly informed me.
How do we oppose it? Just keep telling the truth. Cats are the biggest killer of birds – hundreds of times worse than wind turbines. One Nation aren’t going to take back our resources or tax the people stealing those resources – quite the opposite.
Migrants and Muslims are not the reason why you can’t buy a home… tax policy and negative gearing is the problem. We’re one of the richest countries on earth, but it’s all held by the personal friends of One Nation politicians. Do you think they’re going to get them to share that wealth? Hardly… Please wake up now rather than waiting for the inevitable disappointment of their policy vacuum. Pretty please.
