As anyone who has paid a stupid amount for a non-stick frypan learns to their financial chagrin, even the most robust teflon coating eventually starts to peel off.
And a similar process seems to have occurred with the most unscratchable of Australian politicians with the news that One Nation’s primary vote has halved since the revelations about party members heading overseas to woo money out of the National Rifle Association came to light via the al Jazeera documentary How To Sell A Massacre.
The sight of Steve Dickson and James Ashby trying and failing to solicit funds from the NRA, filmed by an undercover reporter examining the links between US gun lobby and Australia’s right wing parties, seems to have upset the balance in that the primary vote for One Nation has plummeted to 4 per cent.
The sight of the party’s leader Pauline Hanson merrily repeating conspiracy theories about the Port Arthur Massacre massacre might have been the step too far.
And the winners are many!
Fun fact: no, they weren’t.
First up, there’s the Coalition who have seen their primary vote swell to 39 per cent, as have Labor. The latest Newspoll shows that the Coalition and Labor are basically unchanged – it’s a 48-52 two party preferred result, meaning a solid Labor win – but they’ve both benefitted from people going “hoo boy, nope.”
The Greens have also won in that now they have more than double the One Nation vote which makes that whole “they’re just as extremist!” comparison seem even more hollow.
And of course the biggest winner is the Australian public who maybe, just maybe, can start to limit the odious influence of the party on the public discourse around immigration, race and wide-eyed conspiracy theories.
Election strategy meeting.
Speaking of which, Hanson is not up for election this year – she’s safe until 2022 – but this result should be scaring the heck out of PHON’s #1 senate candidate for Queensland, former senator and sovereign citizen Malcolm Roberts (or “Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul” as he likes to style himself when writing very strange letters to Julia Gillard demanding she give him money for the “carbon tax”).
You might recall that Roberts spent his last stint in the upper house denying climate change before being deemed ineligible to sit under section 44 of the Constitution, on the grounds that he was born in South Africa and had sent emails renouncing his dual citizenship to a non-existent address, despite that also not being a legally recognised way of renouncing said citizenship. Bless.
He’ll be representing the party on QandA on Monday, screened on the very channel that broadcast How To Sell A Massacre, so that should be colourful viewing.