When you have been swimming in a sewer long enough, you lose the ability to smell your own filth.
I can understand the appeal of One Nation. The major parties have been, and remain, dire. Too often they are stocked with people interested chiefly in themselves, and One Nation presents itself as the alternative.
It is an alternative that enjoys a peculiar privilege: it has never governed. It can promise the world precisely because it has no record to defend. It never has to wrestle with the messy trade-offs and institutional constraints that come with actually running a Westminster government.
But who needs democracy when you can have a monarchy? And not a constitutional monarchy of the kind we have in Australia or the United Kingdom, where the crown is ceremonial. A real one, where the head of government is also the head of state, and the crown is handed on at the leader’s pleasure rather than the people’s.
At a Chamber of Commerce function in Perth on Thursday, Hanson said she would not quit politics until the ‘right people’ were in place. She hinted that could be her daughter Lee Hanson, who stood at the last election for a Tasmanian Senate seat and will do so again.
In Hanson’s own words:
‘I don’t know how long it’s going to be [her political career], but I’m not going anywhere ’til I know that I’m comfortable to hand on to the next one to carry on my legacy, what I’ve started, and I’m not going to give up on it.’
You see, in One Nation, Pauline Hanson is the boss. Fair enough. She set it up and it is a projection of her.
But, from her own mouth, it is not for the party room, the members, or even the voters to decide who leads. It is for Pauline. At her whim and pleasure.
And this reflex is not confined to One Nation. Here is Nationals MP Llew O’Brien:
‘If Pauline is looking for someone, she has someone right in front of her face. Barnaby has obviously improved the fortunes of the party since he has been there and added a level of expertise.’
You just gotta love that reflex that develops in Canberra.
Again, who needs the party room, the members, or the electorate? The leadership gets passed around like a joint in a room full of stoners.
History offers no shortage of cautionary tales about leaders who came to believe their own judgement outranked the will of the people and I am not for a moment suggesting Australia is bound for anywhere so dark. But the first step is almost always the same: a leader, convinced of their own indispensability, who places their vision above the people they claim to serve.
Be careful what you wish for.
