Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is all stunt, no grunt
Pauline Hanson is too busy organising pranks and playing the victim and should heed the words of NRL supercoach Wayne Bennett and work harder and stop blaming others, writes Nationals Senator Matt Canavan.
My favourite Wayne Bennett quote is that “when a winner fails, he trains harder, while a loser blames others.” We have seen the behaviour of those two groups in the parliament this week.
Pauline Hanson has made a career out of playing the victim.
On Monday, Senator Hanson tried to move a bill to ban the burqa through a formal motion. A formal motion just means that the motion is voted on without debate.
Because it proceeds with no debate, the rule is that any one Senator can object. In the burqa case this week, one cross-bench Senator objected. No one from the Liberal or Nationals party prevented Senator Hanson from moving her bill.
I do not think regulating the clothing choices of Australians is the most pressing issue in front of us, but I had no problem with the debate occurring.
This did not stop Pauline from accusing the “Senate” of denying her a debate on the burqa. The Senate did no such thing. One Senator did. There are other ways that Pauline could have had her Bill debated. She could have moved a suspension of standing orders, or she could have moved her Bill in a general business motion, which would have automatically come with a debate.
Instead of taking Wayne’s advice and training harder, Pauline acted like a loser and immediately blamed others. Pauline did not want a debate. She wanted to gain a victim card that she could play in a woe is me act. So she donned a burqa (again) and distracted the nation’s parliament for days.
None of her actions will deliver any meaningful change. For One Nation, it is almost always about the outrage, not the outcome.
The other way of responding to a loss was also on display. The Liberal and Nationals parties copped a thrashing at this year’s election. We have not sought to blame others. We have copped it on the chin and admitted that we got things wrong. To win again, we have to train harder.
So, the past few months we have put our heads down and worked hard on developing plans that will improve the lives of Australians. On behalf of the Nationals party, Senator Ross Cadell and I have worked on a review of net zero.
A few weeks ago we presented a report that found that since Australia adopted net zero, energy prices have increased by 40 per cent, we have lost over 7000 manufacturing jobs and the obsessive rollout of large-scale wind and solar projects is destroying the environment that net zero vows to protect. And, Australia has been cutting its emissions at a rate double that of the rest of the world.
Following our review, the Liberals and Nationals parties have decided to drop net zero and adopt a cheaper, better and fairer plan.
Our plan is cheaper because we would run our energy system to deliver the lowest possible prices for Australians. We would use all our energy resources (including coal, gas and uranium) to bring power prices down.
Our plan is better because we would do whatever it takes to restore the living standards of Australians. Real wages have fallen to 2011 levels since we signed up to net zero.
Our plan is fairer because we would instead set realistic and achievable emissions reduction targets that are calibrated to what other developed countries are doing.
This week the government finally faced a Question Time where their radical net zero plans faced concerted opposition. The government floundered and could not answer basic questions about when power prices would come down (if at all) or why the government had made an agreement at the latest climate conference to shut down Australia’s second (coal) and third (gas) largest exports.
In fairness, One Nation have been opposed to net zero just like I have been for four years. But now I have 70 members of the Liberal and National parties against net zero and One Nation are left with just four senators.
And, instead of fighting for a sensible energy policy again this week, One Nation resorted to childish and pointless stunts with burqas, steaks cooked on a sandwich press and the premiere of a new movie.
None of these stunts do anything to help defeat a Labor government that presided over a 37 per cent increase in electricity prices in just 12 months, the highest rate of electricity price inflation in 45 years.
One Nation’s antics this week were reminiscent of the second half of Wayne Bennett’s quote, “When a winner makes a mistake he says: ‘I was wrong’. A loser says: ‘It wasn’t my fault’.”
Matt Canavan is a federal Nationals Senator.
Was Anika milking the system or simply doing her job?
