Election comments
by MICHAEL SLOVANOS
PERHAPS is was a bit naive of us to hope that the LNP’s backroom boys would allow Katter’s Australian Party to win enough seats to hold the balance of power in Queensland’s “One Party Parliament”.
Labor, the LNP and their allies in the media all ganged up on KAP leader Robbie Katter towards the end of the campaign over their sacred “progressive” issue – abortion.
In the twisted leftist mentality of the two parties and the media, the mere mention of a challenge to Queensland’s ruthless abortion laws that allow a living infant to die on a hospital table without care is some sort of national heresy against “women’s rights” – and new lives in and indeed out of the womb don’t figure in that argument.
And because it became the “consensus” that Katter was the biggest threat to so-called reproductive rights, Labor, naturally, but also the LNP backed up by media took repeated shots at KAP on this hot button issue. The LNP even lied that KAP had done a preference deal with Labor.
As it stands, the flow of Labor preferences in Mirani, the previously KAP-held set targeted by the LNP, might get KAP’s Stephen Andrew (formerly One Nation) over the line, but the LNP managed to pick a high-profile candidate in Glen Kelly who would appeal to the locals who previously voted LNP and One Nation (Andrew’s former party).
Hopes for a block of at least four but perhaps six KAP seats, in addition to a few Pauline Hanson One Nation seats, have been dashed. That would have likely “hung” the parliament in a formidable challenge to LNP rule. But such a scenario was unthinkable to to the corporate big end of town who like “stability”.
In contrast to Robbie Katter who made no secret of his pro-life position under constant media harassment, the LNP were running for cover as Labor ramped up its “anti-woman” abortion scare campaign. And the hypocrisy of big-party politics was shamelessly displayed by the LNP’s token evangelical pro-lifer Amanda Stoker, who took over Redlands from the previous token LNP evangelical Mark Robinson.
Stoker, when confronted by one of the TV channels over her well known anti-abortion views, simply dismissed any suggestion that she would stand up for what she believed in, saying, essentially: “I’m with the team now and the team says we’re not changing anything.”
She would not even stand up for nuclear power being promoted by her former federal colleagues, because Crisafuli and company are into talking up “green energy” and “sustainability” because that’s the way the wind is blowing and that’s what the media likes.
Stoker and the few other conservatives in the party will also likely find their mouths taped by Crisafuli over LGBTQ issues, because he and his “centrist” Liberals run with the wind on that issue as well.
We wonder whether Crisafuli could well turn out to be another John Pesutto, the weak, compromised leftie who leads the LNP “opposition” in Victoria and should have signed up with the Greens years ago.
But we have to give the LNP some credit for their shrewd choice of Glen Kelly, their candidate for Mirani. Kelly is the Akubra-wearing grazier and fire fighter who believes in practical stuff like fixing roads. Kelly also believes that his party “supports a constitutional democracy and governments that a responsible to the people”. Perhaps he should consider defecting to KAP?
But Kelly, who looks like edging out KAP’s Andrew, will be facing a learning curve as he rapidly learns that idealistic notions of responsible, good, constitutional government are quickly compromised by big party politics and psychological warfare waged by the corporate media and their corporate globalist sponsors.
As for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation’s role in the election, they could have co-operated with Katter, but instead they stupidly contested seats against them. Let’s face it, PHON voters would mostly preference KAP and vice-versa, but PHON sold themselves out into the role of mere LNP preferencers.
One Nation ran candidates in all of the LNP’s six Gold Coast heartland seats, basically wasting resources that could have been spent in seats where they had more of a chance. The only effective PHON contest is Gaven, where PHON preferences could unseat Labor’s Meaghan Scanlon, who has held a number of ministerial porfolios.
Across the state, with 60 to 80% of the vote counted on Sunday, PHON had won a credible 8.17 of the primary vote, just behind The Greens with 9.56%. In Mirani, One Nation effectively took 10% of the anti-major party vote away from KAP’s Andrew, who was at 28.38% on Sunday. Kelly was on 35.82%.
If Pauline Hanson was butt hurt by Andrew’s defection to KAP, she should have just gotten over it and concentrated on seats where they had a good chance. Instead she spitefully ran candidates against KAP, helping to ensure that Queensland is again a one party state and without one seat to her credit.
