Opposition leader Angus Taylor has delivered his most comprehensive attack so far on One Nation, describing it as a "column of smoke" that would, in government, send the country broke. If people wanted to vote for a party that was clear on what it stood for "One Nation isn't it," he said.
Opposition leader Angus Taylor has delivered his most comprehensive attack so far on One Nation, describing it as a "column of smoke" that would, in government, send the country broke.
If people wanted to vote for a party that was clear on what it stood for "One Nation isn't it," he said.
Taylor made his attack in an economic address to the Sydney Institute late Thursday. He has been criticised for tip-toeing around One Nation, in contrast to leadership aspirant Andrew Hastie who has made a declaration of "war" on the party.
Taylor said the party was "long on rhetoric but short on substance". "One Nation's offering is a random grab bag of poorly defined, contradictory, and constantly changing positions that leave no clear sense of who they are or what they stand for".
"Their longest-serving MP [a reference to Malcolm Roberts, although Pauline Hanson is actually the longest-serving] thinks the United States is the 'world's greatest terrorist organisation', and their newest MP [David Farley] is already voting with the Greens and Teals."
Taylor said One Nation also lacked the team to meet the challenges a government faced. "In the end it is a one person show."
He said One Nation would send the country broke because it would double down on the explosion of government.
Deep down, their true instincts are toward big government interventionism. But with even less of a concern than Labor about how to make the numbers add up.
Their top four financial commitments alone could cost the budget in the order of a trillion dollars over a decade.
And they have no clear or credible plan for how they'd pay for these commitments.
Taylor said One Nation's promise to abolish parts of the bureaucracy would only cover perhaps one-fifteenth of their commitments.
One Nation was not a party of government but more like the Greens in this regard.
If they found their way into government, they'd learn the lesson the hard way. World history is littered with failed governments that didn't bother paying for their promises.
He said if unfunded, One Nation's promises would lead to surging inflation. That would require the Reserve Bank to raise interest rates by about 3 percentage points, adding about $20,000 a year in interest to the average new mortgage .
The national debt would be on the way to nearly tripling and increasing rates would "create a compounding feedback loop".
Down that road lies a sovereign debt crisis.
Their only alternative is deeper cuts to essential services - pensions and Medicare chief among them.
That's why I warn that an eternity of pain would follow a One Nation government.
You will not fix our nation's problems by blowing up the joint."
Meanwhile in Britain Hanson has appeared on the podcast of the controversial far right figure Tommy Robinson. On his social media he lavished her with compliments, saying she was "fearless, relentless, consistent, fighting for the Australian people and hopefully the next leader of her nation".
TheConversation.com
Author: Michelle Grattan - Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
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