Content warning: this post includes satire and other things I find funny. I do not care if you don’t share my sense of humour, please do not send emails.
One Nation did not win the Farrer by-election.
It’s fake news. A media conspiracy. They’re keeping the truth from you because Gina’s paying them billions.
Hey look, if everyone can make up their own facts now, I wanna play too.
There’s a parallel universe somewhere out there where Pauline Hanson is a misunderstood anti-racism campaigner and the greatest thing to ever happen to Australia, and Barnaby Joyce has never told a porky in his life.
Unfortunately, that universe appears to overlap heavily with Facebook comments and my work email inbox.
Apparently, according to the disciples of the Church of One Nation, Pauline Hanson is not racist, never done anything racist in her life. This is an extraordinary achievement considering she is possibly that only person in Australian federal politics to have actually been found by a court to be racist, and used worldwide as an example of racist political rhetoric.
Pauline is also apparently a peace loving person, doesn’t tolerate any kind of violence, just knowingly employs a convicted rapist and has a Desi Freeman defending politician assaulting “volunteer” up on to the stage to celebrate the win in Farrer.
These kinds of rejections of the Gospel according to Pauline are not an opinion. It’s not political bias. These are literal things that happened in reality. The same reality where gravity exists and Glad Wrap is not mind control technology, and One Nation did, in fact, win the Farrer by-election.
And yet, every day, there they are in the inbox and comments: angrily insisting Pauline is just “saying what everyone thinks”, and Barnaby can’t-even-tell-the-truth-about-which-party-he-is Joyce is “the only one you can trust”, while simultaneously posting things so horrifically offensive and detached from reality that even the algorithm quietly backs away from the screen.
An example: recently we ran a completely harmless story about Borah Crossing being declared an Aboriginal Place. The team considered the story so uncontroversial they just posted the information provided and I wasn’t even aware of it until I read the news.
An “Aboriginal Place”, for the unfamiliar, or perhaps those who also had the misfortune of reading some of those comments, is not some terrifying sovereign citadel where white Australians are enslaved to entertain some non-human creature like Princess Leia chained up to Jabba the Hut in Return of the Jedi. It was, in this case, basically a spot in a paddock. Identifiable to most only by the group of people sitting on plastic chairs for the event. No secret compound stocked with golden statues depicting Welcome to Country ceremonies. No luxury resort funded by “real working Australians”.
Just a bit of dirt being recognised as a culturally significant location for local people.
That’s it.
And yet people from all over Australia descended into the comments like seagulls attacking hot chips at the beach.
You’d think the government had announced compulsory replacement of all place names and greetings with an AI generated random word and a redistribution of suburban lawns to sacred kangaroos the way people were carrying on.
Of course, I’m joking. Everyone knows all sacred offerings must be made to the Majestic Platypus, not kangaroos.
The sheer emotional commitment to being so furious about absolutely nothing was honestly impressive, although I am sorry we didn’t delete all that, uh, passion, as fast as I would have liked and we had to lock the thread.
(Note to self: lock the thread on this post.)
Most disturbingly, multiple commenters confidently declared that once “Pauline takes power” there’ll be “no more land rights” or things to that effect.
Fortunately, here in actual reality, Pauline Hanson is never going to “take power”. But even if she did, perhaps Designated Survivor like if someone blew up Parliament House while she was taking her nanna nap, she would get a rude lesson that the various institutions of this country that protect our nation would literally make it impossible for her to undo much of anything, including the recognition of Borah Crossing as an Aboriginal Place.
At some point we have to acknowledge that a huge amount of modern populist politics is built entirely around alternative realities designed to keep people permanently angry, and this is not a good thing. This hurts our communities and our nation.
The saddest part is that a most of these people are not bad people. Most are just ordinary people who have been marinated for years in an industrial slurry of Facebook memes, ragebait videos, algorithmic propaganda and cooked political sci-fi.
They’ve been told the country is about to be “taken away from them” every single day for decades now. Their brains have literally been altered by the constant drip feed of hate and fear.
And yet somehow the apocalypse never quite arrives. The Muslims do not impose Sharia law on Tamworth. The electric vehicles do not explode on command from Canberra. The wind turbines do not hypnotise cattle into becoming Greens voters.
Reality stubbornly refuses to cooperate with the script. Sorry about that.
Sadly, instead of calming down when the predictions of doom fail, the movement simply invents a newer, crazier conspiracy to believe in. It’s like a political pyramid scheme, you never get the wealth promised but you’re too far in to back out now. The emotional equivalent of a crypto scam.
What makes it worse is the increasing evidence that a significant amount of this outrage ecosystem is artificially amplified by bots and coordinated disinformation campaigns.
Meaning somebody, somewhere inside One Nation, made a conscious decision that the best way to win votes was to psychologically wind people up until they perceive every acknowledgement of Indigenous culture, every migrant family, every government announcement, and every slightly unusual weather event as proof civilisation is collapsing.
That’s not effective political campaigning. That’s psychological terrorism.
And to be fair, One Nation are not alone here.
Large chunks of modern politics now function like competing fan-fiction universes where facts are optional and confidence is everything.
The alternative reality in the budget this week was something else. How exactly Chalmers and Albanese think they can argue that the “responsible” budget is about “productivity” while axing an enormous piece of productivity creating, environmentally positive, nation building infrastructure in Inland Rail is beyond my comprehension. It is a calamitously stupid decision, certainly not responsible given the thing is already half built, the land acquired, the concrete sleepers are already on site… And they have given no real reason as to why – the $45b figure given to justify the axing seems to be quite literally pulled out of the sky, the actual figure in the budget papers saved by this mishigas is $4.4b.
But that’s what they did. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the budget papers and genuinely felt they were a better work of fiction than a John Grisham novel like I have this year.
When asked directly about the Inland Rail decision in parliament, the level of alternative reality bluster and grade A BS from Catherine King only made it absurdly clear that there is no reason, they just wanted to take from the country and give to the city. Labor is intentionally hurting us because they want to. Probably because they wanted Coalition leaders confused and distracted, or perhaps assumed us country bumpkins couldn’t read a whole budget. Pro tip Catherine: when Barnaby seems like the rational and truthful one in an exchange, you’re in need of an intervention.
I’m sure in tonight’s budget reply we’ll have Angus Taylor tell us all Australia’s problems can be fixed by adjusting immigration numbers slightly, as though the housing crisis, productivity slump, infrastructure bottlenecks and global economic instability are all somehow caused by one international student buying a kebab in Parramatta.
Everybody’s selling fantasies.
Nobody’s selling reality.
And maybe that’s because reality is boring. Reality involves trade-offs and compromise and difficult structural reform and policy detail and admitting there are no magical instant solutions. It requires actual leadership from people able to put aside the ideology, take their eyes off the next election, and do the work.
I know, that reality doesn’t exist either.
Don’t worry, according to the Facebook comments everything is about to be fixed because Pauline Hanson is about to become Prime Minister any day now.
Just as soon as Elvis finishes counting the votes.
End Rant.
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.