In a way, right-wing politicians from minor parties worldwide are doing it tough because of Donald Trump.
It’s certainly easy to make comparisons between the likes of Pauline Hanson and the Republican nominee for President of the United States, but simple links between their oddball characters and blasé xenophobic remarks betray the nuance that separates the American political landscape from our own.
With that being said, Hanson’s One Nation Party has certainly made it a little bit harder to deny those similarities, because they’ve actually headhunted an economist from Trump’s campaign to boost their fiscal expertise. Really. It’s actually happened.
Speaking at a forum in Rockhampton, QLD, Senator Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby revealed “we have just hired – and they’ve just landed in the country yesterday – one of the world’s leading economists… we have just taken him from the Trump camp.”
Ashby also said One Nation’s procurement of one of Trump’s best people – whose identity hasn’t yet been revealed, FYI – is “pretty exciting.
We need to build credibility on the economic front, so that’s why we’ve hired somebody with that credibility.”
We don’t claim to be economic masterminds ourselves, but a cursory glance at Trump’s most recent economic plan somehow doesn’t scream “credibility” to One Nation’s core constituency.
As it stands, he wants to reduce the U.S corporate tax rate from 35% to 15% – because trickle down economics will work any moment now, guys – and he wants to cut 7% from the top individual tax bracket, leaving untold millions firmly in the clutches of the 1%.
This economic roadmap, revealed yesterday, is the also the third he’s released during his campaign; even though his campaign admits this tax-less, spend-more approach would cost US $4.4 trillion (!) over ten years in a volatile world economy, it’s somehow still the most conservative plan he’s hatched to date.
And that’s not even mentioning The Wall, or the costs of his on-again, off-again mass deportation program, none of which align with Hanson’s take that Australia is in the clutches of “out of control debt.”
So, uh, yeah… Credibility. Right up there with ONP Senator Malcolm Roberts‘ take on climate science, hey.
