It’s deja vu for Pauline’s party, and they see it coming in Bendigo
Plus: How Sussan Ley’s impulse buying contributed to the health of the Gold Coast property market.
Pauline Hanson launching One Nation in April 1997:
Australians can no longer afford the luxury of apathy. We must stand up. We must all pull together. We must win this battle, or lose the war.
The ABC summarises beginnings of the party’s breakdown, March 1999:
One Nation co-founder David Oldfield is elected to the NSW upper house. Hanson expels him from the party one-and-a-half years later after a disagreement. He publicly accuses Ms Hanson of being irrational.
In July 2001, Hanson appears before the Brisbane Magistrates Court charged with electoral fraud. She pleads not guilty:
I do believe that this is a political witch-hunt.
Then employment minister Tony Abbott knocks back any preference deal, July 2001:
My view is that we shouldn’t play footsies with One Nation.
The Sydney Morning Herald editorialises, January 1:
Donald Trump’s stunning victory has emboldened those who subscribe to his style of anti-politics. In Australia Pauline Hanson is their elder statesman. But she will need all the leadership skills she possesses, maybe more, to command loyalty from her party of outsiders and conspiracy theory-prone renegades and mould them into a cohesive force. Success has beaten her before: no sooner had One Nation won 11 seats in the 1998 Queensland election than three of its elected MPs baulked at head office control to split the party; by 2001 it was down to three seats.
The Bendigo Advertiser takes a prize for foresight, December 2016:
Those horrified at the thought of the party providing anything more than nuisance value in the political landscape really need not to be worried. It is only a matter of time before history repeats and One Nation implodes under its own incompetence.
The Australian reports on the spreading chaos yesterday:
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has been unable to update the body of its website since October last year when a key figure in the organisation, Saraya Beric, was pushed out, stunning even diehard One Nation loyalists … The dysfunction … also hit the office of NSW senator Brian Burston, whose former personal assistant Diana Allen unloaded to The Australian yesterday. Party co-founder David Ettridge and former president and national treasurer Ian Nelson continue to take potshots at Senator Hanson and her high-profile lieutenant, James Ashby. This was capped by the altercation on Tuesday outside a Perth court in which former One Nation senator Rod Culleton claims to have been assaulted by ex-state Liberal parliamentarian Anthony Fels … Police are investigating.
The Australian online reports Health Minister Sussan Ley’s impulse purchase of property:
Ley says she never intended to buy a Gold Coast unit when she set off for Queensland on a work trip with her husband in May 2015. But the couple ended up doing a deal on a $795,000 unit … in what her office suggested was a spur-of-the moment buy. “The property purchase was not planned,” a spokeswoman said.
The Australian in November 2016 reports on property forgetfulness:
Labor MP David Feeney has demolished the $2.3 million Northcote house he described as his residence last month, having forgotten to declare it until this year’s election campaign … Mr Feeney bought the property with his wife, lawyer and Maurice Blackburn principal Liberty Sanger, for $2.3m in 2013 … He was embarrassed during the election campaign and demoted … after he forgot to declare the property and the tenants erected a Greens placard supporting a rival candidate.