By Graham Matthews
BRISBANE — Three of the 10 One Nation MPs in the Queensland parliament resigned on February 5, citing undemocratic control of the party by founder Pauline Hanson and party directors David Ettridge and David Oldfield. Two other One Nation MPs are reported to be considering resigning from the party.
The former One Nation MPs intend to sit as independents.
The resignations follow an ultimatum to Hanson, signed by all 10 One Nation MPs, demanding repudiation of the draft One Nation constitution, and the election of all party officers. It also demands that all electoral funding due to One Nation in Queensland be administered by an elected committee and that a committee be elected to review the cases of all former members of sacked by the party's directors.
The MPs also demanded, "All minor newspapers that are willing to support Pauline Hanson's One Nation should be given approval by an elected committee, who will also examine all literature prior to print".
One Nation's national leadership has given some ground to the MPs while attempting to dismiss the significance of their actions. Hanson claimed that the MPs' views were always going to be taken into account in the final draft of the One Nation constitution, to be presented to One Nation's annual general meeting (postponed three times in the last few months), but Oldfield dismissed the MPs' actions as irrelevant.
The major parties and the Courier-Mail suggest that the split heralds the end of Hanson and One Nation.
Speaking on ABC radio on February 5, Labor Premier Peter Beattie reduced the conflict in One Nation to a question of "democracy". Unlike the major parties, One Nation members could not decide party policy, he claimed, so disintegration was inevitable.
Democratic Socialist Party Brisbane secretary Jim McIlroy told Green Left Weekly that the causes of One Nation's disintegration are much deeper.
"Beattie's claim that members of the major parties control their parties' policies is a joke. How many in the Labor Party voted for that party's implementation of economic rationalism? How many in Queensland voted for the Beattie government to be the first state government to implement Howard's racist Native Title Act?", he asked.
"What we are seeing is the populist demagogy of Hanson backfiring on her. Hanson has claimed to stand for the battlers against the bureaucracy, and now sections of One Nation are demanding that action follow rhetoric within the party itself.
"From its very beginning, One Nation has represented contradictory forces — disaffected conservatives as well as hardened right-wing ideologues with their intricate and nutty conspiracy theories. This supposed parliamentary revolt is in reality a revolt of the self-styled battlers against the party they were told they would control."
The three MPs who have resigned from One Nation — Dorothy Pratt, Sean Nelson and Ken Turner — have not distanced themselves from the party's fundamental policies, while quibbling with some the party's more embarrassing public pronouncements.