Markets 
Opinion
I understand the tactic of not attacking One Nation because I used to advocate it myself. Not because I ever thought the Liberal Party should be soft on Pauline Hanson but because, like former Liberal prime minister John Howard, I accepted the argument that attacking her would just give her oxygen. It was a sensible strategy at a time when voting intention for One Nation was sitting at about 6 per cent and had been for years.
It doesn’t work when current polling shows that its support is twice that of the Coalition. In the new political environment, nothing Liberal leader Angus Taylor does is going to give Hanson any more oxygen than she already has. She consumes oxygen like a bushfire. And, like a bushfire, she leaves a devastated landscape behind. Whenever Taylor is perceived to be dodging or fumbling the answer to questions about One Nation, it guarantees that it dominates the next news cycle.
There is another reason why Coalition politicians are hesitant about attacking One Nation: they don’t want to offend its newfound supporters, most of whom are their own discontented traditional voters. Above all, they know they must avoid the colossal error that cost Hillary Clinton the presidency in 2016. “Basket of deplorables” were three words that changed the world: if Clinton hadn’t shown such obvious contempt for disgruntled elements of the Democrats’ own traditional constituency, she wouldn’t have lost the election by a whisker. There would never have been a President Donald Trump.
Taylor and his colleagues understand that, which is why he said last week that he had no argument with One Nation supporters. Of course he doesn’t; most of them are people who have always voted for the Coalition. The problem, however, is that any senior Liberal who says something which can be misconstrued – or misrepresented – as being even vaguely sympathetic to One Nation’s viewpoint is instantly branded by Labor and the left commentariat as “One Nation lite”. It’s unfair, it’s untrue, it’s intellectually dishonest – but it’s a political reality.
In a sense, Taylor is becoming a victim of his own reasonableness, of the intelligent person’s natural instinct to explain. But sadly, in the reductive state of modern politics, there is no room for nuance. Only simplistic, blunt, uncaveated, preferably monosyllabic answers meet the occasion. There’s a good reason why, when One Nation slipped in the polls after Hanson’s “monoculture” speech, it was Labor, not the Coalition, that benefited. If Taylor had just savaged her, not tried to explain a nuanced position, the gain would have been his.
The inimitable Amanda Vanstone put it best: “If you’re going down a dark alley … and the bogeyman’s coming, the person who turns around and says ‘now look, I’m very intelligent and I’d like to tell you what I think about this bogeyman’ and the other guy grabs a baseball bat and says to the bogeyman, ‘piss off!’ – who’re you going to go with?”
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a conversation between Vladimir Lenin and an apathetic Russian citizen. “You might not be interested in politics,” said Lenin, “but politics is interested in you.” Taylor may not be interested in having a fight with One Nation – he would far prefer to focus solely on Labor – but One Nation sure as hell wants a fight with him. He either fights back or he looks weak.
That doesn’t mean disrespecting One Nation’s supporters. Nor does it mean being personally unpleasant about Hanson herself. But it does mean relentlessly exposing the truth about her party. Because when you lift the lid, that truth is pretty ugly.
These are not conservatives in any meaningful sense of the word. They are radicals and wreckers; not legatees of Menzies but imitators of Trump. They want to tear down institutions, not reform them; mock the rule of law, not respect it. They routinely use race-baiting language while denying they are racists; pose as patriots while ridiculing Australian values, like tolerance and pluralism, that have made us a beacon to the world; and wrap themselves in the flag, while inciting vigilantism – as they have recently done against Andrew Hastie, a soldier who put his life on the line to fight for that flag.
The disillusioned Liberal voters now flirting with One Nation aren’t anything like that. Their support for Hanson comes from frustration with the Coalition, not admiration for her “values”. Liberal leaders must never be afraid to remind them not just how confused One Nation’s policies are, but how essentially unAustralian One Nation is.
Hastie’s recognition that the Liberal Party is at war with One Nation may have been a metaphor, but he spoke with the authority of an actual warrior, not a metaphorical one. He understands that although his party’s contest against Hanson is not a conflict of its own choosing, no amount of appeasement will wish it away. And, as a close student of history, he also understands that such a policy of appeasement would end the way appeasement always does.
Angus Taylor needs to show that he understands that too. One Nation having declared war on the Coalition, he has no choice but to fight back, to expose it ruthlessly, without hesitation or reluctance, while reminding the Coalition’s straying tribes that supporting One Nation is no way to rid themselves of Labor.
Those disaffected conservatives, traditionally the Liberal base, want a leader who is a warrior. They didn’t see that in Sussan Ley. They are still making up their minds about Taylor. If they don’t find that fighting spirit in him, they will look for it in someone else.
George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK. He also served as a Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.
George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.From our partners
Read the full article here
