One Nation on the rise / WA State Election thread

[Skids]

Comparing Pauline to Joh Other than they're both from Queensland there's no comparison at all.

I think you may be underestimating Pauline, a bit loke a recent election somewhere in the Northern hemisphere maybe?

One Nation senator Pauline Hanson: 'Yes other MP's have approached us'

Pauline Hanson said she and One Nation have been approached by other MPS from the two major parties wanting to join One Nation because MPs were frustrated by the lack of action from their political parties.

Senator Hanson dropped a bombshell on Queensland Parliament on Friday by announcing she had secured the support of Buderim LNP MP Steve Dickson to become a new One Nation MP in Queensland Parliament.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/one-nation-senator-pauline-hanson-yes-other-mps-have-approached-us-20170114-gtrh4n.html

[think positive]

A few more home invasions, daylight muggings, carjackings with spy cams showing Sudanese perpetrators around werribee, point cook & Tarneit, and every vote in Wyndham will be for one nation. And we used to think that Muslim family and their regular SOG parties on the corner of old Geelong Rd was the biggest problem around here!

Truth is do you blame them? Low income areas, struggling families who don't get much out of the budget, and now with all this violence on the door step, Call it racist, but the cameras don't lie.

[David]

[regan is true fullback]

Skids wishfully thought:

[Pies4shaw]

I just think it's a valuable lesson of optimism in our great country that even a racist, failed fish and chip shop owner with no discernible abilities or talents or capacity for logical thought can aspire to high political irrelevance.

Less than 20 years ago, the polls suggested that One Nation would get 18% of the Federal vote if an election were held. Nothing more, really, need be said on that subject.

There is certainly some significant support at the moment for politicians who proffer a simple explanation for the marginalisation and dispossession of many members of the no-longer-required-to-work-ing class. It's a testament to the failure of vision of our two main conservative parties (the LNP and the ALP) and the lack of any viable, even moderately left alternative that there is any place in our system for paranoid right-wing loopies to peddle their nonsense.

Globalisation has left a lot of people who used to have reasonably well-paid, secure jobs with little - and with little to look forward to. One doesn't have to be a conservative nutter to recognise that those tragically marginalised people have a list of priorities on which the major menu items of the trendy purported "left" either don't appear at all or have a low ranking. They'd like life opportunities for themselves and their families, first (or, perhaps, instead).

The plight of these people needs to be adequately addressed. It isn't, of course, addressed by ending muticulturalism or keeping Muslims (or Asians or whoever else Pauline dislikes this week) out of Australia. However, as long as the two major political parties keep trying to sell a message (whatever discernible nuances there may be between the two) to the effect that we are all, on the whole, better off by allowing jobs to move offshore because it's better for capitalism and capitalism is good because it makes more money for us collectively and we all get a bit of it, the more likely it becomes that the hopeless, marginalised poor will want to see what they consider to be objectionable parts of the present system dismantled.

[Tannin]

Oner Nation represents the views of a significant minority of Australians. The 11% figure Skids cites from a WA poll seems a little low to me, I suspect that a more realistic figure would be closer to 20%.

Now you might complain that One Nation's MPs and Senators are, in general, weird, spooky, questionably honest, and - let's face facts here - mostly of sub-normal intelligence.

So? I mean, it's not as if most of the current Liberal Party members are not all of those things, and as for the Nationals, well, they make Pauline look practically normal.

I applaud the rise of One Nation. It is entirely appropriate that Australians be represented in parliament by people who reflect their views. It's called "democracy" and, on balance, it's a better way to run a country than any other so far proposed.

There are other benefits too: perhaps, now that the really stupid right-wing sickos have a party of their very own, we might see the Liberal Party return to its roots, become more moderate, more interested in the welfare of Australia than in linings its own pockets at the expense of the nation.

Hmmmm .... No. Forget that last paragraph. The Liberals are too full of graft and moral cancer ever to recover. One Nation is more honest than they are, and Pauline would make a better PM than Turnbull. Hell, at least she would do something, and she might even do something because she thinks (however wrongly) that it's the right thing to do, rather than for reasons of graft, greed, and cronyism.

[Tannin]

One Nation also has some sensible policies. Most of their ideas are just stupidoty and ignorance writ large, of course, but it is a mistake to imagine that everything One Nation stands for is bad just because One Nation stands for it.

For starters, One Nation is genuinely concerned about industry policy and retaining local jobs and manufacturing capacity. They don't seem to have any realistic clue about practical policies to achieve this, but they are at least trying to think of one, which is more than you can say for the Liberals, who are actively trying to destroy it, or Labor, which has half a clue about the problem but can't decide if it actually cares about it enough to do anything more than watch, hope, and not do as much damage as the Liberals. Only the Greens have both genuine desire and practical, workable policies in this area.

One Nation is the only, repeat only major party which supports what the majority of Australians want and have wanted for many years: an end to our insane and unsustainable open-slather migration policy. OK, they want it because they are racist scum, so their reasons are all wrong, but they are at least the only major party supporting a sensible, sustainable, practical population policy. In the long run, population policy is the most important thing to get right - without a successful, sustainable population policy, you cannot have a successful economic, crime, infrastructure, environment, health, retirement, or social security policy.

One Nation: right answer, wrong reasons. Well, at least its the right answer. Compare with, for example, the Greens, who have the wrong answer for the right reasons, or the Liberals, who have the wrong answer for the wrong reasons, or Labor, who have no answer and can't remember the reason.

[Mugwump]

[Culprit]

One Nation beats the drum with what's wrong in the world without putting up solutions. My view is by the time the next election comes around both the major parties will have a massive change in policy and how far they shift to the left or right will largely depend on the ramifications on what transpires in the US after Saturday.

[CP]

[David]

The difference is that the Greens have been a steadily growing force for 20 years now, whereas One Nation have essentially had two (so far) very brief periods of success � '96 to '98 and the most recent election. Whether or not the Greens have reached their ceiling for support is hard to know, but they've already wielded far more influence and held more numbers at a federal level than One Nation has managed in an equivalent time period. They've also been a relatively unified and professional force, which one suspects will never be the case for Hanson's motley crew.

It's easy to say that a party will evolve and adapt, but the fact is that it doesn't work like that for most minor parties � they need a lot of political smarts, public support and luck to survive. While the far-right will remain a potent force in one form or other, I think One Nation as a party stands much less of a chance of achieving long-term success then, say, Xenophon's group.

[swoop42]

I've got to ask.

What exactly has Pauline and One Nation achieved to date?

[watt price tully]

[Pies4shaw]

[watt price tully]