Analysis
Updated
Kenny Craig was the stage hypnotist in the television series Little Britain who was not as good as he thought he was.
"Look
into my eyes, look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the
eyes, don't look around my eyes, look into my eyes … you're under!"Because he wasn't very good, some of his audience in the early days used to pretend they were hypnotised, just to keep him happy.
There seems to have been a lot of Kenny Craig going on in Australian politics this week, except for the bit where the audience pretends to be hypnotised to keep Kenny happy.
From Pauline Hanson and her lieutenants' dalliances with the National Rifle Association to the Prime Minister and his strong stand on preferences, we have been asked to indulge an unpersuasive bunch of hypnotists to disbelieve what is in plain sight.
There are usually quite a lot of demands on voters at budget time, and election time, to look into the eyes of politicians. But even if both these events are imminent, we seem to have reached a new obligation to suspend disbelief in the last couple of weeks.
A sting that won't change minds
Speculating about what sort of money One Nation may be able to gain from the NRA, One Nation Senate candidate Steve Dickson ponders, in the Al-Jazeera documentary How To Sell A Massacre, what could be done with millions of dollars of NRA support."If we could get that sort of money, imagine, we could change Australia," he muses.
Ms Hanson's chief of staff, James Ashby, observes that if One Nation was able to pick up $10 million of funding "you would pick up eight Senate seats."
"I mean, that guarantees you the balance of power, you'd have the whole Government by the balls," Mr Dickson says, a sentiment he repeats when he says in a meeting with the NRA that if "we get the balance of power, very simply that means that we have the testicles of the Government in our hand at every given stage.
"And guns, in the scheme of things, are still going to be the be-all and end-all."
Whatever the circumstances in which these observations were recorded, the intent of the two men seemed clear.
Yet Senator Hanson — who was not involved in the NRA meetings themselves — told voters on Thursday this was all an elaborate sting by a foreign influence, the Qatari Government, while failing to see the irony that this sting exposed operatives of her own party working out whether they could exploit another foreign influence for the party's gain.
Her statement to the media in Brisbane on Thursday was a masterful performance in playing to her base, making herself the victim and keeping a firm distance from the actions of Mr Ashby and Mr Dickson.
For the rusted-on Pauline supporters, the whole affair will have only reinforced their support for the One Nation leader. For the less firm One Nation voters, who have moved their votes from the major parties in disillusion, it is more likely to send them in search of other minor parties or independents, rather than back to the major parties.
Budget gamble for Morrison
Scott Morrison said this week he didn't want One Nation's preferences, he wanted the primary votes that had shifted from the Coalition to the minor party.That might be a noble political aim. But such a shift, against a tide of disillusion has to occur because the government of the day has come to represent something to people.
Sadly for the Coalition, it is instead apparently on a constant path of not standing for much at all.
It has left much hanging on Tuesday's budget, with its declaration that the Government's books will finally be back in the black, and with tax cuts and cash payments to address the sluggish wage growth that has caused such discontent among voters.
Such handouts can work as hip pocket bribes in their own right, or as mechanisms to create a point of difference with your opponent in the day to day slug of an election campaign.
But you have to be sure that your opponents can't simply match your moves, or, in the case of Bill Shorten last year, actually virtually double some tax cuts.
Election eve appeasement also only works if voters are of a view to be wavering about a government, not deeply disillusioned with one.
Once again, that requires a clearer sense of purpose to drag voters back.
Even on the question of One Nation preferences, the Prime Minister wanted to look like he was taking a strong position — by saying the Liberal Party would preference Labor ahead of One Nation. But he waited too long to do it and the obvious flaw in the Coalition's position — and in the strength of his authority — lay in the fact that the Nationals did not follow.
The gesture ended up being a naked exercise in damage control in the south rather than a position of principle.
The power of preferences
In last year's Super Saturday by-election, the seat of Longman fell to Labor after the LNP candidate was revealed to have misrepresented his military record.
Angry voters saw the number of One Nation votes rise from 9.42 per cent of the primary vote at the 2016 general election to 15.91 per cent.
And at the by-election, 67.74 per cent of One Nation's preferences went to the Coalition.
This was not enough to stop the Coalition suffering a 3.66 per cent swing against it. But if One Nation preferences flowed at the lower rate seen in the 2016 election — 43.51 per cent — then the swing at the by-election would have been 7.52 per cent.
This is only indicative, since the primary votes were different. But it gives you an idea what an impact higher preference flows can have.
How will One Nation retaliate?
The question remains, however, what One Nation will do in its preference decisions, as opposed to what the Coalition does.At the 2016 election, One Nation in Queensland adopted different "how to vote" cards in different electorates, sometimes suggesting split tickets to its voters, depending on whether they were disgruntled Labor or Liberal voters, or whether, as in the case of Wyatt Roy, there were scores to settle.
In response to Scott Morrison's declaration on preferences, Senator Hanson said on Thursday that "you, Prime Minister have just handed the keys to The Lodge to Bill Shorten, Di Natale and the CFMEU. You're a fool".
This sits rather uneasily with the fact that what she is suggesting is that her party's own preference decisions might not achieve exactly that result.
Senator Hanson's ultimate interest, however, rests not in who wins control of the House of Representatives but whether she gains another seat in the Senate and, with it, a balance of power position akin to the one that her colleagues were discussing so lustily in America.
This is the real election that voters in Queensland will be determining when they look into the eyes of One Nation on polling day.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
