Saturday 24th of October 2026
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gently persuading them away from the insurgent nutcase party.....

 

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned those on the progressive side of politics not to “scold” or “mock” potential One Nation voters but instead to take seriously the task of persuading them away from the insurgent party. 

By directly acknowledging the seriousness of One Nation’s support and advancing a strategy for tackling it, Chalmers is underscoring that the party is a threat to Labor, not just to the Coalition. 

Delivering the Bernie Fraser Oration, sponsored by the Australia Institute, a progressive think tank, on Tuesday night, Chalmers also had a sobering message for straitened households. Reserve Bank and Treasury forecasts did not expect economic conditions to get much better in the next three months, he said, although they did expect things to get “a bit better” over the next year.

Chalmers said the combination of near term pressure and transformational change had made people feel more disconnected from opportunity, and “mourning a loss of control as change accelerates around them”. This was fuelled, politicised and catastrophised by “algorithmic rage bait”. 

“In our system One Nation has been the most obvious beneficiary of all this but the political ramifications are playing out across the world,” he said. 

He pointed to political churn in Japan, South Korea, Germany and France. In Australia, One Nation’s support had doubled in a year. Three in ten people now said they’d vote for them and they were getting a foothold in the House of Representatives and state parliaments. Nobody expected the polls to change soon.

The far right strategy is to divide people and it’s working; their goal is to talk down our economy so that their endless negativity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Their core message is often clear and sometimes very appealing: let’s just go back to a more nostalgic version of the world we remember. 

We have all the facts to push back on this, but facts don’t beat feelings. Feelings are as real as facts.

The past will always feel safe and familiar and desirable because by definition we understand it better than we understand the future. That’s normal. That’s human. When a significant swathe of our fellow Australians find that message of returning to an idealised version of the good old days appealing – we shouldn’t turn on them.

The role of progressives “is not to scold those who see appeal in that message. It’s not to mock them or ‘cancel’ them or talk down to them”. 

Rather, “serious progressives” should adopt a two-pronged strategy, Chalmers said. 

One half was to persuade people that returning to the past, appealing as it might seem, was not possible. 

The other half of our mission is this: to persuade working people that the path we advocate, the path we haven’t walked before, is actually the safer, more secure and more prosperous path for them and their loved ones. 

And you do that by starting not from a place of smug moral superiority – but from a place of genuine respect and understanding. 

Chalmers admitted “a desire for the past is rooted in dissatisfaction with the status quo”.

It was important to point out One Nation and the Coalition would make people worse off, not better off. 

What they offer is just culture war camouflage for cutting wages and attacking workers. 

Their superannuation policy would make people much poorer in retirement; their wages policy would eat away at take home pay and living standards; their unfunded commitments would blow a hole in the budget; their migration policy would smash the economy.

But it was not enough to point to the risks posed by the threat from the right. Delivery of government policies was essential, said Chalmers, listing what the government had been doing in various areas. Also essential was reform, that the government was undertaking on a number of fronts. 

Stability and the status quo are not the same thing, nor is longevity and legacy, but they are very closely related because you can only properly change this country from stable political foundations. 

Perhaps a key mistake made by parties of the left is that in their defence of democracy and institutions they’ve also inadvertently become the party of the status quo. We are not making that mistake, we are reforming the status quo in tax and housing and in other ways, in the interests of working people. 

Hoping the far right goes away or implodes again is not actually a strategy. But acknowledging and acting on the pressures people are under, delivering better and more tangible outcomes for them, and reforming the status quo in their interests is, and that’s our approach. 

Looking to the economic prospects over the next year Chalmers said of official forecasts:

Their expectation by the end of next year is for inflation back in the target band, with 20 of 31 economists surveyed by Bloomberg expecting interest rates to ease by around that time as well. 

They expect unemployment under 5% and the return of real incomes growth, and high levels of investment. 

And we expect the tax reforms will be bedded down and legislated by then too. 

But Chalmers added a qualification. “So much of the next year will be hostage to decisions taken in Washington, on Wall Street, in Tehran”. 

Chalmers said these difficult times tested Australians and their governments. 

But they’re also a test of whether a country’s character falls to the level of its critics, whether we turn on each other, or reach for the most comforting culture war, or whether we are capable of doing the harder thing, to change and adapt and reform and prosper together through uncertainty.

https://theconversation.com/jim-chalmers-warns-progressives-not-to-mock-one-nation-voters-293216

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

gina's conga-line.....

A conga line of Liberal and National Party defectors is vying to run for One Nation at the NSW election next year, belying the populist party’s anti-establishment narrative and potentially undermining leader Mike Newman’s claim that candidates will come from outside the political class.

While One Nation is yet to confirm most of its candidates for the upcoming election, potential nominees include a growing list of former Liberal and Nationals MPs, as well as one-time political hopefuls.

 

The long list of familiar faces who have nominated for One Nation’s increasingly crowded upper house ticket include Katherine Deves, the anti-trans campaigner picked by former prime minister Scott Morrison to run for the Liberals for a tilt at the seat of Warringah in 2022, former federal Liberal senator Hollie Hughes and former NSW upper house MP Lou Amato. One or all of them could also run for a spot in the lower house.

They are among a slew of former major party MPs, candidates and officials to join One Nation’s ranks over recent months.

 

The party’s new registered officer in NSW, Les Wells, is a former Nationals staffer who made an unsuccessful tilt to be the party’s candidate in the seat of Oxley at the 2023 state election.

Sean Gleeson, who ran for the Nationals in the seat of Port Macquarie at a byelection last year, has also held discussions with One Nation about potentially running for the party in 2027. Gleeson remains a member of the Nationals but has stepped down as chair of its local state electoral conference and is weighing up a potential defection. He declined to comment.

Other one-time NSW Coalition figures to jump ship include the ex-Wollondilly Liberal MP Nathaniel Smith and the former Upper Hunter Nationals MP Michael Johnsen. The latter resigned from parliament in 2021 following allegations he raped a sex worker. He later said he had been “vindicated” after the NSW Department of Public Prosecutions recommended there was “insufficient admissible evidence to proceed with charges”.

In a statement, One Nation said only three candidates had been preselected: Newman, and lead upper house candidates Stuart Bonds and Tamworth gun-maker Jeff Bacon.

“We have received more than 800 applications from community leaders, advocates and business people,” a party spokeswoman said. “Candidates for the 2027 election will be announced as we approach March 13th 2027.”

The influx of Coalition defectors into the party’s NSW division presents an emerging tension for the resurgent right-wing party as it tries to maintain its outsider status while seeking to mount a serious challenge against both major parties at the March election. As the Minns government increasingly sharpens its focus on One Nation, figures within the party are keenly aware of the risk of being tagged as Liberal-lite.

Newman, a former investment banker and NSW trade commissioner, has repeatedly said One Nation would field candidates from outside the political mainstream. At a press conference on Tuesday, he said that would be the “palpable difference” between One Nation and the major parties at the election.

“I’ve said before I am not a politician. I don’t have any political background,” he said. “I don’t belong to parties that I’m beholden to internal structures. You are, we’re not, and that is going to be the palpable difference that will be at this election.”

In defending the party’s policy to scrap independent assessment of mining projects and instead hand decision-making powers back to ministers, Newman argued a One Nation government would be less susceptible to corruption because they “are not former politicians”.

But many of those swelling the party’s ranks are. Hughes, for example, was a senator and member of the Liberal Party’s powerful state executive. She is currently “strategic counsel” for Coalition-aligned lobbying firm DPG Advisory, run by former Liberal adviser and Morrison ally David Gazard. She was booted from a winnable spot before the last election. Amato, similarly, was an upper house MP for the former NSW state government before he was bumped from the ticket before the 2023 election.

Deves, a prominent campaigner opposing the inclusion of trans women in women’s sport, was the Liberal Party’s pick to take on Warringah MP Zali Steggall at the 2022 election. Her candidacy prompted a firestorm of criticism, and she issued a series of apologies over social media posts including one in which she compared her anti-trans activism to resistance against the Nazis.

Hughes and Amato did not respond to a request for comment. Deves referred the Herald to One Nation.

With the election less than six months away, Labor has honed in on One Nation as repeated polls show the party leading the Coalition. NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey this week challenged the party to submit its promises to independent budget scrutiny, saying the state couldn’t live in “budget fairy land”.

Labor announced on Tuesday it would introduce a new debt ceiling of 15 per cent of gross state product and cut debt by $10 billion in a further attempt to contrast the government’s fiscal restraint with the Coalition and One Nation.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/the-long-list-of-former-coalition-mps-seeking-new-home-in-one-nation-s-crowded-nsw-ticket-20261014-p614zv.html

 

 

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PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

SEE ALSO: 

an eye-opening experience.......

easy target....

 

Ross Gittins

I’m sick of immigration being blamed for problems it doesn’t cause

 

Migration has become an easy target for voter frustration, but the promised cuts are unlikely to deliver what politicians claim – and could create serious economic problems of their own.

For as long as I can remember, voters have disapproved of immigration, while governments of both colours have encouraged it.

To put it politely, all that’s changed is where most of the migrants come from. They used to come from Europe, now they come from Asia.

Sydney Morning Herald polling finds that two-thirds of Australians want our refugee intake (which is a lot smaller part of total immigration than the punters seem to imagine) slashed, more money spent on deportations and a ban on immigrants coming from countries where extremism is a danger.

One reason governments like immigration is that business is all in favour. If you’ll forgive a little cynicism, it’s not hard to see why. When you’re trying to increase your profits, the easiest way is to sell into a growing market. And when you need skilled labour, it’s a lot easier to sponsor a migrant with skills some other country has paid to provide them with rather than to fiddle about with your own apprenticeships, training schemes and such like.

All this is why, for many years, the two major parties had a tacit agreement to avoid talking about immigration in front of the children, so to speak.

But the resurrection of Pauline Hanson and her ratbag One Nation has changed all that, and now it’s on for young and old.

What’s eating the voters – and driving much of the surge in support for One Nation – is the high cost of eating which, as I’ve argued repeatedly, is not so much because of high prices as it is lower wages to pay for the stuff. That’s hard to fix; bull-dusting on about migrants is much easier.

But if ever there was an outfit happy to jump on the anti-immigration bandwagon, it’s One Nation. It has started a how-low-can-you-go reverse auction between the parties. With so many of its former voters shifting their support to the party, the Liberals were the first to join the auction. Even the Labor government felt sufficiently rattled to join in.

One Nation promises to cut net migration by 750,000 in its first three years, then move to an annual limit below 130,000. This, they boast, would be the biggest cut to immigration in our history.

The Coalition has proposed to more than halve net migration for two years to 100,000, then 130,000 in its third year and 160,000 in its fourth year. After that, net migration would be tied to the pace of housing completions.

In response, the government has announced measures to achieve a net migration rate of 225,000 a year by 2028. This would be down from an outsized 300,000 in 2024–25.

How do I think it would turn out in practice? In the unlikely (and unthinkable) event of One Nation winning government, it would discover that the realities of office prevented it from doing anything like what it promised.

The econocrats would immediately explain that, as its opponents had argued, negative population growth would tank the economy. About three-quarters of the 2.1 per cent growth in gross domestic product over the year to June was accounted for by population growth.

Should One Nation press on regardless, it would fall well below its target. No government has that much control over net immigration.

Were the Coalition to win government, and the air come out of the One Nation balloon, it’s likely to return to type as the party of business whose business is to make it easier for business to stay in business.

It would go through the motions of keeping its promise and not worry too much when not much came of it. The idea of linking net migration to housing completions sounds nice but, in practice, would be very hit and miss.

If Labor survives in office, it would stick with its announced intention to reduce net immigration to 225,000 a year, but the target would be hard to hit because of factors beyond the government’s control.

Our opposition to immigration is primordial – deeply instinctive. But we mustn’t let it blind us to the benefits immigration brings. Don’t forget that, without immigration, our population would be falling, thanks to our low natural increase (births minus deaths) and a fertility rate (number of kids over a woman’s lifetime) of 1.48 – and likely to go lower.

Any economist will tell you that you don’t want to live in an economy with a falling population. Opportunity doesn’t grow, it contracts.

Like almost all countries, we have an ageing population. That means an ever-growing population of oldies who pay little tax but generate a huge bill for pensions, healthcare and aged care. Without immigration, that burden would be borne by an ever-smaller working population.

Immigration slows the ageing problem. With more people to share the cost, a bigger population makes it possible to afford improved infrastructure.

Remember too that immigration gets blamed for problems it didn’t cause or, more commonly, only partly contributed to. So, while an end to immigration would cause a shrinking economy and a new set of problems from there, a big reduction in annual immigration wouldn’t have much noticeable effect on other problems.

It’s true, for instance, that our recent high migration (which was bigger than the government intended) contributed to the rising cost of housing. But that’s not true historically, and if you think a cut would make much difference, you’d be disappointed.

House prices are the result of many factors, including the inefficiency of our housing industry and our recent choice to have fewer occupants per dwelling.

Immigration is often blamed for road congestion but, should a cut come about, we’d be hard pressed to notice much difference.

It’s a pity our more sensible politicians are so quick to jump on a populist bandwagon but so reluctant to explain to voters why the populism makes little sense.

 

Republished from The Sydney Morning Herald

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/10/im-sick-of-immigration-being-blamed-for-problems-it-doesnt-cause/

 

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PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….