It can be tough as a non-establishment party to compete with the major parties and established minor parties who already have the infrastructure, resources, processes and people in place to contest seats in elections. One way to tackle this is to get a core team of really solid candidates in electorates that you know you have a fair chance of winning and make sure that that core team is the best it can possibly be.
The other approach is the one that One Nation chose to adopt: sign up absolutely everyone who’s willing to say they hate Muslims on camera and hope they don’t shit themselves in public before or after the election.
Startlingly, this method has not been 100% effective for them. They quickly suffered a 25% reduction in senators after an insane saga with the now-former Senator Rod Culleton, who got kicked out thanks to interpersonal issues only a short time before he was ruled ineligible to be a senator.
They’ve also had two very publicly dump two candidates, one for some wildly obnoxious social media homophobia and another for some batshit Port Arthur conspiracy nonsense. In addition to that, they had a Queensland candidate quit on them after he was asked to delete a tweet said the only LGBT he can get behind is Liberty, Guns, Beers and Tits, which is outrageous – surely you can get behind both.
In another wonderful example of what happens you select candidates solely on the basis of whether or not they hold some extreme social prejudices, one of their candidates in the WA election is copping flak for a bizarre article he wrote ripping into single mums.
In an article for ‘Quadrant‘, David Archibald, who is running for Pilbara, argued that single motherhood was a lifestyle that needed to be defunded:
“The first that springs to mind is single motherhood.“These are women too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly 3 million years of evolutionary pressure.“This will result in a rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly.“We know what causes pregnancy these days, so everyone who gets pregnant outside of marriage is a volunteer. This is an easy one for defunding.”
He also argued for defunding the disability pension and childcare:
“The 800,000 Australians on the disability pension. OK, not all of them. But a good proportion are able to drive cars, bash police and each other, go fishing and so on.“Now comes federally funded childcare. This is a lifestyle choice. Looking after children is very labour-intensive.“If society wishes to encourage childbearing, it should reward that with tax rebates to the childbearing pair and leave it at that.”
In addition to those pearlers, he has also claimed that both the Stolen Generations and climate change are a myth. Seems like great bloke all round.
There’s been no response from Pauline yet, but that might be because she was too busy trying to figure out with Andrew Bolt whether Islam is a religion or an ideology (it’s a religion):
‘Is it a political ideology or a religion?’ @PaulineHansonOz calls for a senate inquiry into Islam on #TheBoltReport @skynewaust pic.twitter.com/5VJE2VNWka
— The Bolt Report (@theboltreport) January 31, 2017
You can read the full article here and figure out for yourself if he’s trying to be satirical – although it seems very unlikely given that he agrees with Abbott‘s point.
Source: ABC.
Photo: Kalgoorlie Miner.
