Surely the lies people use to defend Pauline Hanson have stretched beyond breaking point. In the wake of idiotic statements about immigration, the Great Barrier Reef, the dangers of vaccines and her laughable taxation policy, Hanson supporter inevitably reply that at least she calls things how she sees them and you can actually trust her. But can you? This year she has come out strongly in favour of the government’s irresponsible tax cuts for the rich, then announced her party would not support them (losing a senator as a result) before supporting them anyway. How can anyone watching say that her word is any more trustworthy than those of her supposedly 'more deceitful' parliamentary colleagues. An even bigger and more harmful lie that is perpetuated by facile commercial media is her claim that she stands for battlers and low-income families. A lot of people saw Jacqui Lambie and Pauline Hanson as very similar politicians, but while I was no supporter of either, I do respect the fact that Lambie was honest about what she stood for and genuinely tried to represent the interests of low-income Australians. The same cannot be said for Pauline Hanson.
Admittedly, the majority of Hanson's supporters are also in this demographic, but that doesn't mean she acts in their interest. Hanson's voting record speaks for itself and tells a very different story to the narrative she and her media allies tell. She votes with the Coalition almost 90% of the time and has supported almost every cut to public services, welfare and pensions, as well almost every handout or tax cut for wealthy individuals and multinational corporations. In short, she supports Coalition policy aimed at redistributing wealth away from her supposed battlers to the richest in the country (her cringe-worthy fawning towards Donald Trump is indicative of that as he treats the people who elected him with the same disdain). Why? What is her thirty pieces of silver in this scenario? Don't assume she is too stupid to know what she is doing. She may not be smart, but there is nothing accidental about the unholy alliance she has formed with the Liberals and Nationals. Whilst the Coalition benefit from their aggressive with kickbacks, campaign donations and cushy jobs after politics, One Nation benefits in a very different way. If Australia had higher levels of employment and education and lower levels of social disadvantage; that would translate to less One Nation voters. So the twisted irony is that Hanson actually benefits from inflicting greater hardship her supporters and blaming everything on immigration. In this way she is a symbiotic parasite feeding and servicing the larger Liberal-National Coalition. Of course she would never get away with such deception without the support of her co-conspirators in the Liberal Party, or if the media was more responsible in its coverage and analysis of Australian politics. But sadly that is not the country we live in.
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