Life-size cardboard cutouts of Pauline Hanson will replace her at polling stations in Longman because she’s on holiday…
For all those familiar with my writing, I feel that I have to add that I am not making this up. You can google it or, if you no longer trust that giant search engine, just ring Pauline’s office directly. Although I’m not sure that Pauline’s office wouldn’t be just as likely to tell you that it’s fake news and that she and Donald Trump will be campaigning side-by-side at all polling stations in all parts of the world.
Anyway…
Pauline has evidently decided that now would be a good time for a holiday, given that there’s a by-election in her home state of Queensland. While some of you may think that this would be an inappropriate time for the leader of the party which contains her name to take a break, Pauline doesn’t think the same way that other people do.
Ok, ok, I know that some of you will be telling me that I could have finished the previous sentence after the word “think”, but you are overlooking the fact that Pauline didn’t just leave her party in the lurch. She prepared life-size cardboard cutouts of herself, obviously counting on the fact that her supporters wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. After all, she reasoned, they still think that she’s on the side of the battler and haven’t noticed that she’s voted with the government to screw the poor at every opportunity.
In fact, tactical genius, James Ashby, was quoted as telling us that the cutouts were “as good as her”, adding, “A photo visual of Pauline is as good as her being there because it is a presence. People will still be able to come and get a photo with Pauline.”
Now, some of you may think that getting a photo with a cutout isn’t actually the same as getting a photo with the real thing, but they’re the sort of people that point out having a life-size model of your favourite Hollywood star in your home is not the same as actually being married to them. In short, they’re not the voters that Pauline Hanson’s One Notion is appealing to.
Of course, James, people may remember, was one of the clever people behind the plot to embarrass Peter Slipper. My One Nation source, who coincidentally is also made of cardboard, told me that Ashby didn’t go far enough. (That’s in his statements about Pauline, he wasn’t suggesting that he didn’t go far enough with Slipper.) According to my source, far from being just as good, a Pauline cardboard cutout was even better than the real thing. For a start, it could be practicallly everywhere at once, but not only that, it didn’t need to have a rest break. Most important of all, if asked a question, it wouldn’t say, “Please explain”. And it certainly wouldn’t say something that could be repeated in the media and twisted to make it sound as though Pauline was saying something racist just because she was expressing support for good Christian values like burning crosses with protective sheets over one’s head.
If the PHON candidate tomorrow does well – and let’s face it whenever Pauline’s party gets more votes than Malcolm Roberts’ 77, the media suggest that it was a good result for them – then Pauline can claim it was because of the cutouts. On the other hand, if they do poorly, then she can rail about how the government held the election when they knew she’d already booked a holiday.
Whatever the result, I expect to see several opinion pieces expressing the view that if it wasn’t for Bill Shorten, Labor would have increased its vote by a significant margin. This will be followed by suggestions that they should try a similar tactic and have as leader a cardboard cutout. While they could replace him with a talking dummy, programmed to say a few key phrases when you pulled its string, this would simply look they were copying the Liberal Party.
Oh that’s iron pyrites classic
Note that the PHON candidate is the Duracell powered Matthew Stephen who was also Pauline’s choice for the seat of Sandgate in the recent State election. With 15% of the primary vote, he did rather well which demonstrates his efforts and dollars spent. Both considerable – and therefore a suitable PHON bunny for Longman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_district_of_Sandgate
Dennis Atkins (CM) predicts that PHON’s vote might get to 25% (there is a significant rural idiocy element in the electorate) which makes Stephen a significant (bit) player. As to how the preferences flow will be the main interest.
Hilarious, one of your best, Rossleigh….
I was laughing so much, I got a coughing fit, that scared the dog and husband enough to feel they had to run upstairs to rescue me ..
When realising what had happened and found out why was I coughing/ choking they both looked rather irritated… yes, the JR as well…
Ar least the cardboard PoorLeans will have more brains than the real thing! I expect the plods and blackshirts from Dutton’s electorate next door will be on hand tomorrow to arrest anyone assaulting a cardboard PoorLean.
For the life of me I still can’t find the names Turnbull or Shorten on the Longman ballot paper, but the Murdoch and “Nine” press here keep telling me it’s a contest between those two – and so does the ABC! Help – I might be forced to vote for a cardboard PoorLean!
This is not an original idea. Anyone who watches the Fleetwood Mac video of the song Tusk will see Mick Fleetwood carrying around a cardboard replica of John McVie who I think was ill when the video was shot.
Typical of Hanson and her evil svengali/guru Ashby (how is it he was never charged for his scurrilous behaviour over the Slipper debacle, including, if I am not mistaken, the theft of Slipper’s diary in concert with Mal Tree-Branch (sorry, Bough – no, sorry again, Brough); they are incapable of original thought. Mind you, I take the author’s point that assuming Ashby and Hanson are capable of “thought” might be a bridge too far.
Presumably, Hanson had to hide from the withering attacks that might have been wrought upon her by her media nemesis, the ABC. Perhaps she realised the PHON candidate would be embroiled in controversy.
“The cutout is as good as the real thing” Both have got wood pulp for brains.
Only the real one gets $200,000 to sit in the parliament and the other gets turned into manure. Should be the other way around.
Now,now Rossleigh, you know the Porelean penalty for telling the true facts …. you must run away and hide before getting slapped on the wrist with a wet tram ticket!!
It is appropriate that James Ashby’s Only Nutters Pollution have a cardboard cutout of the nominal leader. It has the same weight as her diatribes, has the characteristic absence of brains that we have observed repeatedly, and may be easily carried off by any maladjusted male.
Somehow the selling point of a cardboard replica is absolutely perfect for this group of unthinkers.
I will be interested to see what a facsimile of PH raises when they are inevitably auctioned off in a party fundraiser after the by-election. Unless they are to be kept and spread around in the real election whenever it happens ( soon, please).
When bored One Nation supporters are entertaining, rather like the mythical Jew reading the Sturmer in the Viennese cafe because it is so refreshingly lunatic in its paranoia. So, let me see. Vegemite is part of a Moslem conspiracy against Our Values because it is certified halal. All religions are headed by Satan, except that of the wild eyed goatee bearded chap who tells me so. Too many immigrants, says the blue eyed white man sitting at my table, speaking to a slightly later white arrival. Black gangs, Moslems in burkas, whatever PH fancies. What ARE the schools doing, to breed such people?
She was never the real thing anyway.
“Life Size Cutouts Of Pauline “As Good As The Real Thing””…. I think that the cutouts are far better than the real thing…. They don’t talk!
Publicity about ‘cut-outs’ keeps the Pauline (and PHON) name up there in media lights as it were. It matters not whether the publicity be good, bad or indifferent. Any publicity is good publicity as far as their demographic is concerned. Thus for PHON, ridicule is still a victory of sorts.
No doubt, James Ashby has any number in stock to sell to future candidates and interested collectors. Part of the publishing/printing allowance?
I thought a friend of mine was kidding when she said that Hanson wants police protection for the cutouts because people will steal them and hurt them.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queensland-government/pauline-hanson-lifesize-cutouts-to-standin-for-her-absence/news-story/2fb77627ce68483458db0b864cf023a9?nk=9662aad5265c514f80819316d28c7257-1532734902
BWAHAHAHAHAHA…
You only have to look at the cutouts to see that they’re more intelligent than the person they are there to represent.
Somehow I suspect the 2 dimensional replicas of the oxley-moron will be made from plastic corflute rather than corrugated cardboard, however, just in case I am wrong and the Pauline-dummies are printed on paper, I shall now go outside and earnestly pray for widespread precipitation.
I have a mental image of all these cardboard Pauline Hansons melting in the rain like the wicked witch of the west.
Frank Smith, I’m experiencing the same annoyance – keep hearing how it would be out the political norm if the standing Member lost to the in-government party etc, but without any contextual summary of the circumstances surrounding the Longman electorate & the dog fight with PHON at the last election.
We’re going to hell in a handbasket, but I’m so glad that Rossleigh will be with us – we need the larfs
How about a referendum to vote on replacing the whole lot of the current lot of them with cardboard cutouts. Maybe we needn’t to go that far, afterall we’ve got the new improved Nine propaganda machine to fix everything for us – puppets for everyone! Yay!
Well, as the results from the weekend voting showed, the Labor candidates performed far better than any of the so-called “experts” suggested they would, all over Australia, hooray! As for our “beloved” (NOT!!) Pauline Hatsfull, I really think these corflute cutouts have more brains & sense than she bloody has! Anyway, apart from Queensland, the rest of Australia could hardly give her or what is left of her party, the time of day. Time to go Hatsfull, methinks!