Just a flush in the pan
The voters of Farrer have jumped from the dirty dishwater of the LNP into the boiling sewer of PHON.
The far right herd of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party won yesterday’s by-election in the former COALition stronghold of Farrer here in my home state of New South Wales. ABC News describes the political sideshow thus: “The result saw One Nation record not only a landslide but an historic victory in Farrer, as the Coalition lost part of its heartland and the jewel in its crown — a seat it had held for nearly 80 years.”
This is the first time in PHON’s erratic and corrupt history that it has won a Lower House seat in Australia’s federal parliament. That said, these days the L/NP coalition is not much different to the mouth-breathing, flag-waving, knuckle-dragging cranks, bigots, anti-vaxers, chemtrail alarmists, chancers, cheats, obscurantists and racists of PHON.
After all, way back in 1996, Poor Lean was an LP candidate until LNP PM John fucking Howard gave her the boot. The little bastard even had her briefly jailed for corruption where she developed a fear of thongs (or flip-flops, for you Kiwis).
The irony, of course, is that the Lying Rodent then appropriated her racist dog-whistle and turned it into a fog horn.
The seat of Farrer was formerly held by the laughably incompetent Sussan Ley for 25 fucking years but was up for grabs when she quit after being shafted by her colleagues: she was briefly LP “leader”, but only for crash test dummy purposes.
A Trump worshipper, the barely coherent and sublimely ignorant Hanson is insufferable at the best of times – most recently when she received a “donation” from Gina Rinehart, the grotesque “billionaire mining magnate and businesswoman, and the richest person in Australia” – but after this the raving redhead will be screeching even louder.
Gina the Hutt’s donation? A brand new Cirrus G7 worth $1.3 million. At the same time, $2 million in cash was showered on Hanson like manna from the fossil fuel mining industry by stockbroker Angus Aitken, Gina’s Hancock Holdings CEO Adam Giles, and Ian Pilmer, the notorious anti-science scientist.
So much for Poor Lean’s ceaseless claims of caring for the average Aussie battler! She just takes their mad money and lurches off into the tall grass. When she sheds crocodile tears for the “forgotten people”, Hanson doesn’t mean the foolish plebs who have made her a multi-millionaire during her 30 – THIRTY! – embarrassing years as a Senator, she means the rotten rich rightwing extremists who are her real backers.
But one thing seems a certainty: following One Nation tradition, winning pop-up candidate David Farley will probably soon quit the party and declare himself an Independent. Yes, folks, more than two-thirds of all elected One Nation members have exited before the end of their term.
So, no need to panic. This PHONey win is just a flush in the pan. Poor Lean Hamstrung will continue to entertain us and provide ample material for comedians, cartoonists and blog floggers for years to come.
