The Western Australian Election was a stunning success for One Nation. I mean, the political party, not Australia… Or any other nation, for that matter. No, they did really, really well. Fantastically well! Just ask Pauline. She said it was a great success.
Or ask Malcolm Roberts who seemed to think that they’d be winning three upper house seats.
Ok, some of you pedants may point out that going from one to three is a three hundred percent increase while going from zero to three is impossible to calculate because there’s nothing on the bottom line, but Malcolm Roberts is good at Maths because well, he is, and he has empirical evidence for that, because he does and it’s not made up like NASA graphs! Of course, others may simple wish to point out that it doesn’t actually look like they’ll get three seats, so I guess that could be considered a 33.33% decrease!
Yes, it was disappointing that they didn’t get the twenty percent of votes that one poll forecast, or even the ten percent that many others predicted, but that’s ok, because, well, as Pauline said, it was a fantastic result because if it hadn’t been for that “scare” campaign about their preferences going to Liberals then many people would have voted for them. Well, that’s what she told us. But Labor ran a dishonest campaign and pointed out that her party was preferencing the Liberals, and this somehow led people to think that One Nation was supporting them. “Let’s be clear,” she told us. “Colin Barnett was like sour milk and just because we were telling you to vote to keep it in the fridge, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t think that it smelled bad and should be thrown out, but somehow Labor twisted the fact that our how-to-vote cards were helping the Liberals, and tried to suggest that I was just a Liberal Party stooge who supports their policies on penalty rates and screwing those bludgers on welfare, whereas I actually think that the Liberals haven’t gone far enough on penalty rates because I know what it’s like to be a small business owner and when the milk in your fridge goes off, it’s really hard to sell it! And this had the effect of putting many of our potential voters off, because let’s face it, they’re pretty gullible and believe what they’re told.”
She also told us that the media is “not letting you know the results we have got.” No, it’s all “fake news” and One Nation actually won the election and Pauline is now Premier but you won’t read that anywhere because of that conspiracy between Rupert Murdoch, NASA, The Greens, pharmaceutical companies, Labor, Rod Culleton and voters in WA to stop the truth from being told.
While some are wondering exactly how accurate those poll figures were, I can say with certainty that the polls were completely accurate reflection of the people who were polled. The fact that they were so different to the actual votes on the day doesn’t mean that opinion polls have no validity when it comes to minor parties like One Nation. No, it simply means that either something like two-thirds of the people changed their minds about voting for PHON at the last moment or by a remarkable coincidence, all the polling companies just happened to get a disproportionate number of Pauline supporters owing to the fact that they did their polling outside One Nation party meetings.
Meanwhile the Liberals have decided that the idea of swapping preferences is really good and that it was only the fact that Pauline’s party got so few votes that caused Mathias Cormann to make it clear that just because he helped set up the deal, doesn’t mean he was the only one who should take the blame. In fact, he hardly had anything to do with it. Probably it was someone involved in the Essendon scandal who came up with the original idea. Or Kevin Rudd. But swapping preferences is a good idea and next time we hope that not only do One Nation get more votes, but we also hope that fifty percent of their preferences don’t leak back to Labor. Maybe next time, they’ll try to swap with Labor. They got plenty of votes!
Yes, a “fantastic” result according to Senator Hanson. Of course, it’s unclear whether Pauline meant the word in the sense of “extraordinarily good or attractive” or whether she meant its other meaning: “imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality”!
Seriously people what we need here is a special warning button. “Beware possible humour”.
I now have to go home and change my trousers and 2 ladies at table “J” are wearing the overspray from my coffee.
A pox on both houses, with our without that ranga fish shop woman.
For starters – some debunking away from “unreal reality” or just because “if I say so, it must be so” or “everyone is a winner”:
First three paragraphs should be posed as background to questions in a school/high school maths exam – not as multiple choice – please clearly show how you arrived at your answer.
Oh, and let’s not limit it to school children ……..
apparently there were more people at her meetings than at the labor and liberal launches combined. Perhaps an Australian record attendance?.
She forgot to capitalise on a personal message from trump via a tweet but she will make her seats in the upper house count. one two
“…. that caused Mathias Cormann to make it clear that….”
Mathias has never made anything clearer to me, no matter how many times he has repeated his message…
Sorry, I have learnt something from him: “It’s all ‘Laibor’s’ fault.”
‘Laibor’ has done all the bad things that Mathias has experienced in Oz….
The interview with Cormann was the very first and only one where he never blamed the Labor party.
From zero to three in the mathematical sense approaches infinitely better. One would have thought Roberts, the scientist, would know that. Missed an opportunity to really boast.
LOL, Peter Stephenson, you are right, but as my mum used to tell us when we as kids started shedding our winter gear too early: One swallow does not a summer make….
If I was WA Labor I would be courting the Nats right now. They are understandably pissed off with the Liberals so the timing is good.
In the upper house it looks like Labor and the Greens will have 17 of the 36 seats. Liberals, One Nation, Shooters and Lib Dems look like getting 15 together. The Nats with 4 probable upper house seats will hold the balance of power (though if either ON or Shooters backed Labor and Greens that would give them 19 votes too). The only way the Libs can prevail in upper house is to get everyone other than Labor and Greens to vote with them. The Nats can make the other 5 odds and sods irrelevant should they choose to back Labor.
Good article Ross and i love your sense of humour that comes with it.
BREAKING: Roberts ‘happy’ with WA result. “Let me be clear; we got more votes than we didn’t think we wouldn’t not get”, said the Senator.
Roberts is frothing at the mouth over renewable energy at the moment. Latest Tweet
“The Greens are proposing changes to #18C making it illegal to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate renewable power.”
Peter, could it be that the blame chip in The Cormannator’s “brain” was accidently switched off that day?
Ross, you must pay closer attention: what she said was ‘It is a fantasy result’.
If Malcom Robert’s only fantasy is that One Nation did exceptionally well in the WA ballott
without empirical evidence -let it be so –
the poor delude coal industry spokesperson also thinks he’s 77 personal votes he recieved last federal ballott
was an overwhelming endorsement of his non existent eschewed anti NASA enviromental warming -idiocracy
—Cake ?–“Let them eat -Coke”
I agree with Kaye Lee – I’d be courting the Nats too – they must be furious with the Libs anyway, and their heart seems to be in the right place (whereas the Libs dont have one) in that their leader Brendan Grylls (maybe wont win his seat though) is passionate about improving the opportunities, lives and jobs of the regions, otherwise maybe Pauline will get her nasty little claws in there herself.
Good post by John Menadue on ‘Pearls and Irritations’ on this very same issue….
iF the WA election taught us anything it is, That Australia is dead set against Trump style politics,It’s not OKto open your mouth and speak rubbish without proof,And when you don’t like being proven wrong about the rubbish you spew ,you just ban the media,
Going from one to three is not a 300 percent increase. It is a 200 percent increase. Kindergarten arithmetic.
This coming from the women that went swimming at the Great barrier reef got out & promptly declared that the Reef system was in blooming good health. The section she swam at was free of bleaching & therefore in her deluded mind meant that conservation groups had got it wrong….however this section of reef being Great Keppel is/was in reasonable good health. So yeah it would be a great result to her & even more so that anyone bothered to vote for her, God why do all the pollies from QLD have to be such morons? Makes you cringe being a Queenslander. All I can see this return to Politics is about her getting super fund topped up to retire on & feed off the toxic hate soup that is brewing in our country
Well she did pull nearly 1,000 more votes than the Greens……
Dagney J. Taggart
I think One Nation has a great deal to be concerned about and it seems the commentary is non stop on that but try as I may I cannot find why the Greens did so poorly and at this stage of counting have a 0.0% increase in vote and tend to get the Maxwell S,art cone of silence as though the question shouldn’t e asked and if ignored it will go away {the questioning}
I have been reading around and came across some Upper House figures for the 6 zones
East Metropolitan
Greens 19,570 7.81% 0.5466 One Nation 19,430 7.75% 0.5427
The Greens preferenced Labor 14 to 19
South West
One Nation 15,283 10.28% 0.7197
The Greens (WA) 10,509 7.07% 0.4949
The Greens preferenced Labor 14 to 19
Agriculture
One Nation 7,596 11.33% 0.7931
The Greens (WA) 2,121 3.16% 0.2214
The Greens preferenced Labor 11 to 14
Mining and Pastoral
One Nation 4,174 14.09% 0.9862
The Greens (WA) 1,556 5.25% 0.3676
The Greens preferenced Labor 12 to 15
Northern Metroplitan
The Greens (WA) 22,128 8.87% 0.6211
One Nation 15,835 6.35% 0.4445
The Greens preferenced Labor 11 to 14
South Metropolitan
The Greens (WA) 22,067 8.37% 0.5859
One Nation 17,553 6.66% 0.4661
The Greens preferenced Labor 19 to 24
Without direct Labor preferences it seems the Greens wouldn’t have gained any Upper House members
In return the Greens preferenced Labor at the Highest, from 11 to at worst 24th
The net result at this stage of counting is One Nation 2
Greens WA 2
With the help of a thousand times more free publicity leading up to the election.
As a person watching from afar, I didn’t even know if the Greens had any candidates.
O Pauline, get out of that sour milk sea. You don’t belong there.
Seems odd how quickly this result seems to have been buried. Can anyone give me an update on upper house seats?