Scott Morrison has spent the last fortnight hedging his bets when asked whether the Liberals would follow Labor’s lead and put One Nation last on their How To Vote cards as a repudiation of their anti-Islam position.
And if the Christchurch murders wasn’t enough to galvanise the government into action, the sight of Pauline Hanson openly calling the Port Arthur Massacre a government conspiracy and therefore calling into question the legacy of John Howard’s gun control response was a bridge too far.
And so Scott has now made a decision. Sort of.
Still a magical moment.
“I have been in touch directly with [the party apparatus] today and overnight, because ultimately this is a decision for the party organisation, but my recommendation to them, which they’re accepting, is that One Nation will be put below the Labor party at the next election by the Liberal party,” he announced on Thursday, ” based on our strong view about the sanctity of Australia’s gun laws and to ensure that at no stage that those things should ever be put at risk.”
Now, eagle eyed political enthusiasts might have noticed that the promise is not to put One Nation last as per Labor, just to put them below Labor.
That still gives Liberal MPs the chance to put the Greens last because of their insidious lack of coal-love, and therefore opens them up to criticism about just how seriously they take PHON’s Islamophobia over climate change culture war posturing.
Well, except politically. And physiologically, actually.
So aside from not quite deflecting the existing criticisms, it’s also guaranteed to start a fight with the more One Nation-adjacent members of the government.
That’s because this directive only applies to the Liberal Party, not the National Party.
So the Nationals are free to ignore this directive, but it’s not clear what’s going to happen in Queensland where the Liberal-National Party is one single amorphous blob (and also in the Northern Territory where they’re the Country Liberal Party) and those LNP members in marginal and non-metropolitan seats are unlikely to warm to the idea of Labor potentially getting their votes.
Labor are a big threat, for example, in the seat of Dawson held by the controversial George Christensen: a man who has been particularly unhappy with Morrison throwing him under the bus this week over revelations that Georgie’s been spending more time in the Phillipines than in parliament over the last few years.
In other words: Morrison has swapped one fight for another, this time with members of his own government. And given that the election will (finally! FINALLY!) be called next week that’s a fight he really doesn’t need.