Opinion: Falling at early hurdle is not end of potential political career

THEY fall like horses in the Grand National; hopeful, hapless politicians who survive the gruelling process of preselection only to fall in the hurdle race of the campaign.

THEY fall like horses in the Grand National; hopeful, hapless politicians who survive the gruelling process of preselection only to fall in the hurdle race of the campaign.

This time it was a poor bloke in Victoria who failed to declare his “business interests’’ who was weeded out before being given the chance to hear the electorate’s verdict at the ballot box.

That John Min-Chiang Hsu’s business interests happened to include a Frankston brothel called “Paradise Playmates’’ should have been immaterial to a Coalition with a demonstrated commitment to small business.

Then there was Pauline Hanson, the Ipswich fish and chip shop owner disendorsed from the seat of Oxley by the Liberals. Picture: Dan Peled

But poor Johnno, self-reliant and dedicated to free enterprise as he was, was given the boot out of the Victorian seat of Calwell simply for making an honest living from a legal brothel described online as being tastefully decorated with a “$350 King Room special’’.

It is dispiriting, sometimes it is deeply unfair, but disendorsement need not mean the end of a political career.

Dan Van Blarcom, the ­Nationals Party candidate for the state seat of Whitsunday, was disendorsed ahead of the 2003 election after he was photographed wearing a Nazi armband but still bravely put up his hand at the 2015 state election.

Graeme Campbell was tossed out of the Labor Party in 1996 for negative comments about multiculturalism in Australia but still won it as a federal independent the same year.

Then there was Pauline Hanson, the Ipswich fish and chip shop owner disendorsed from the seat of Oxley by the Liberals.

Pauline not only went on to win the election as an independent in 1996, but achieved political stardom as the founder of One Nation and, 20 years on, she is still campaigning.

Originally published as Opinion: Falling at early hurdle is not end of potential political career