Strange Politics: Fingers crossed for a One Nation implosion

There is every hope a spectacular Palmer United Party-style implosion is just around the corner.

One Nation is taking a leaf out of the Clive Palmer playbook, with the odds of a PUP-style implosion looking increasingly likely. Picture: Digitally altered / Thinkstock /

THE whir of a great big vacuum cleaner has set the One Nation headquarters windows a-rattlin' with ruby-red hair balls and shreds of Aussie flags whizzing about like wounded chooks searching for their heads and a roll of duct tape.

There is every hope a spectacular Palmer United Party-style implosion is just around the corner.

Senator Rod Culleton's increasingly buck-wild antics have driven a wedge in the party so deep Pauline Hanson resorted to giving him a serve via an ABC cameraman this week.

There were reports the West Australian senator (for now - pending a High Court legal battle about stealing a key) was refusing to meet with his party leader amid allegations he had attempted to pervert the course of justice by sending a letter to a Cairns magistrate accusing the High Court of not "conducting its business in the name of the Queen".

Hanson's response was delivered with the icy glare of a cane-swinging headmistress who knows exactly what brand of scallywaggery you have been up to, young man.

"Rod, excuse me, I'm party leader," she fumed.

"I expect you to come to my office.

"It's about being a team player, and that's all I expect.

"I have the respect from my other senators, and I expect the same from Rod Culleton.

"Hopefully Rod will come to my office in the morning.

"We'll have a discussion."

Suitably chastised, Rowdy Rod finally answered the call on Wednesday with tail between legs for "a good chat".

He claimed Hanson agreed he was "a well-oiled machine" and his only gripe was he was not offered tea or a biscuit, but even that did not worry him "because I already had one".

Hanson assured everyone the party was united, not unlike Clive Palmer's 2014 assertion his team was "rock solid", about five minutes before his senators all went independent.

Back then, Jacqui Lambie said claims of internal tensions were just a "diversion from Murdoch papers".

There were also echoes of 1998 when six of One Nation's 11MPs in Queensland quit before the next election.

The problem with starting a loopy political party is the candidates you attract, not unlike the bulk of your voters, tend to be living proof of reverse evolution.

One Nation's climate change-denying Senator Malcolm Roberts is more proof, what with his call for an "Aus-exit" from the "monster" United Nations and decision to air his unfounded global warming theories in a podcast on the anti-Semitic "Jew World Order" website.

But then again, everyone knew One Nation was going to be a pack of strange ducks and still they voted them in.

And it isn't confined to One Nation. The recent Orange by-election in NSW shows just how many holes the major parties are willing to shoot in their own feet just to stop the other from succeeding.

Labor gave its preferences to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and got them over the line, further destabilising the two-party system - just so the Lib-Nats would look like drongos.

Even if One Nation implodes, this is far from the end.

Originally published as Strange Politics: Fingers crossed for a One Nation implosion