It was very depressing to see One Nation make a surprising resurgence in the 2016 election, but we’ve been able to take comfort in one simple fact: they are wildly, wildly terrible at their jobs.
Since July, their supposed mighty return to power has been plagued by infighting and surprise discoveries that their huge swathe of unvetted candidates was full of people even too weird to join their elite cadre of climate-change-denying halalophobes.
December saw them experience a steep 25% decrease in Senators, as the well and truly embattled Rod Culleton pulled up stumps due to an ongoing clash with Pauline Hanson and also pretty much everything around him.
Culleton was yesterday taken to hospital after an incident that took place after a court visit in which he attempted to secure a restraining order against two of his former associates. He injured his wrist after falling over in a fracas caused by former WA parliamentarian Anthony Fels attempting to serve him bankruptcy documents, which very nearly resulted in a biff:
Former One Nation senator Rod Culleton has been taken to hospital after a fight outside the Perth Magistrates Court #7News pic.twitter.com/IdhqL0KaCs
— 7 News Queensland (@7NewsQueensland) January 4, 2017
Because this could barely get more farcical, it turns out Anthony Fels had nominated as a One Nation candidate for Western Australia – which was really only a matter of time, as he has previously run for the Liberal Party, Katter’s Australian Party, Family First, the Mutual Party and as an independent.
In an attempt to maintain some of the trace amounts of dignity the party has left, Pauline Hanson heavily distanced herself from Fels:
“I heard about it, I heard about it last night and I am not impressed with it all.“Anthony Fels, let me just make it quite clear, Anthony Fels had a meeting with me, at the request of people who know him, to actually stand as a candidate – no one has been endorsed as a candidate in Western Australia, because the party has not been registered yet.“I am not impressed with it all. He was serving papers, it was nothing to do with One Nation, it is a civil matter.”
What a time to be alive.
Source: The Age.
Photo: Getty Images / Lisa Maree Williams.
