The chickens have come home to roost
While not normally inclined to defer to the other side of the political spectrum, I wish to make a major exception and announce the formation of the David Oldfield Appreciation Society.
Comrade David, as many readers are sure to know, is chief political adviser to Ms Pauline Hanson, the nation's favourite feral MP. If Ms Hanson clawed her own way up Capital Hill, it has been Oldfield who has turned her into its star.
Who would have thought way back in 1996 that the little known fishmonger from Ipswich would one day have her own political party and, soon after, her very own state! Who must we thank for making this possible (besides the Howards and the Keatings and their kin, who worked so hard on her behalf)? Why, Davey Oldfield, of course — true blue mate to Aussie battlers everywhere.
Don't you go thinking that Mr Oldfield and I always see eye to eye. Indeed, our respective political philosophies are miles apart. That is why I am heading up the Appreciation Society's Marxist-Leninist wing. The right wing get all of Davey they want up close and personal. But me, I'm content to appreciate from afar.
And you know what I appreciate most of all? The way Davey has taken real hurt and real suffering and put a right-wing spin on it. That's talent! For example: "Your boss didn't sack you. Some wog took your job."
The rot that One Nation complains so much about set in long ago. To name a few names off the top of my head (and its not being a tittle-tattle to point the finger like this): the ALP and the Coalition spring readily to mind as likely culprits. So in the mind of Joe Blow out there, some sort of reckoning was called for.
While it may have been the standard thing to lament the shift to reaction these last few years, it's a bit unfair to blame the traditional right for it. The right doesn't change; that's why it is called conservative.
But on what once was called the left, motion and change were very real. So much so that the "old left", if we but have the guts to recognise it, is really the "new right". It soured, that's all.
In its desire always to march with the Labor Party, maybe the old left didn't actually break into a goose step, but it sure kept veering one way rather than the other.
The correct thing to do would have been something a lot different. The left could have worked together to form a viable left alternative to Labor, to defeat the Libs. Instead, David Oldfield Inc has given us One Nation, and for what we didn't do, the chickens have now come home to roost.
By Dave Riley