As a child, my favourite TV show was Cartoon Corner, which was on Channel 9 every weeknight at 4pm. It was a welcome escape from the weary grind of primary school, and was hosted by Daryl Somers with the puppet Ossie Ostrich as his sidekick.
That was Daryl Somers’ first TV hosting gig, and the show itself had started with another host, although I was too young to remember the previous host.
He and the Ostrich were very popular, and they soon had a spin off show called Hey Hey It’s Saturday, which ran for 3 hours on a Saturday morning. Hey Hey was a very different show circa 1975. It was a longer version of Cartoon Corner, with triple the number of cartoons.
However, the network apparently decided to give Daryl Somers creative control, and the show rapidly evolved from a kids’ show into something quite different, something which primary school age kids would find unwatchable and quite boring. So… by the mid 1980s, Daryl Somers was one of the hottest properties on Channel 9, hosting a show which had moved from Saturday mornings to evenings, and which was definitely not for kids.
I remember in late high school that one bloke in my class wanted to get a few people together to go on the Red Faces segment, solely to stick their fingers in their throats and barf up on live TV.
A shame that did not happen. It would have been very funny, albeit gross.
Daryl Somers had a hiatus from being a TV host for a while, but then made a comeback on Channel 7 as the inaugural host of Dancing With The Stars – a program I am proud to say I have never watched.
He was not the only famous person making a comeback on that show. Pauline Hanson was one of the ‘stars’ who danced in the initial season.
At that time, Pauline was more or less washed up. She had gotten into parliament as a disavowed Liberal candidate in a safe Labor seat in the 1996 federal election, and gone on to make significant waves with her comments on welfare, aborigines, and migrants, comments which resonated with the type of voters whom, in the USA, might currently be called the ‘deplorables’. She had set up her own party, One Nation, and attracted a few supporters around Queensland, and won a few seats in the 1998 Queensland state election with candidates who were not the run of the mill sort offered to voters (one was an artillery bombardier and another was a mechanic and ‘part time Santa Claus’).
Things fell apart however. She did not retain her seat in the 1998 federal election, there were disputes with various of her supporters, and she was targeted by Tony Abbott in particular for alleged misuse of electoral funding. This resulted in her spending several months in gaol until her conviction was overturned.
She even left One Nation for a while, after disputes with various of its officials.
I am not sure about the nous of those supporters. One of the more prominent of those, David Etteridge, suggested that Australia print more money and give it to the farmers.
This statement was enough to immediately turn me right off the idea of choosing her movement as a viable upper house protest vote (I rarely give the Coalition my Senate primary vote and I do retain a soft spot for the DLP).
Don’t take my word for it – the Australian Financial Review did an article in 1998 on this visionary economic thinking, describing it as part of ‘a long tradition of monetary charlatanism’:
https://www.afr.com/politics/funny-money-view-not-new-19980626-k852z
So by 2004, whilst the Howard government prepared to win a fourth term, Pauline Hanson was more or less washed up and marginalised.
And then came Dancing With The Stars, one of those many television programs which provide a vehicle for b-list celebrities to remain in or return to the public eye.
This was a stroke of genius on the part of whoever advised Pauline Hanson to do this. Suddenly, this political has been with her lost seat and legal troubles and rather wacky supporters was in the public eye again, in prime time TV, and dressed elegantly.
Her political comeback proceeded slowly and carefully, culminating in her return to Federal Parliament, albeit to the Senate, in the 2016 Double Dissolution.
Since that time, both sides of politics have seen the mainstream parties (the ALP on the left, and the LNP Coalition on the right) progressively lose more and more of the primary vote which they once took for granted. Independents of various persuasions (Teal and other) have taken numerous formerly stronghold Liberal House of Reps seats in unprecedented numbers.
Various formerly prominent figures, mostly from the Coalition, have defected to One Nation in recent years. Whilst George Christiansen and Craig Kelly joining at the time of their less than voluntary retirements from parliament could be construed as almost inevitable, former Labor Federal Opposition Leader Mark Latham resurrecting his career in the NSW Upper House with One Nation was a surprise, even for one as erratic and petulant as him.
Now, former Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has turned his back on the party and coalition which not only gave him his distinguished political career, but introduced him to his future second wife.
The latest to jump onboard is Cory Bernardi, who used to be a Liberal Senator until he jumped ship after just after his reelection to form his own short lived party, the Australian Conservatives.
The recent poll results show that Pauline Hanson’s personal popularity is now at 38%, in front of Prime Minister Albanese at 34%, Barnaby at 23%, and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley at a niggardly 10%.
In terms of primary vote, Labor remains at 34%, One Nation has leapt to 26%, and the Liberal-National Coalition is at 19% – a record low.
I will be honest – I remain highly skeptical about the viability of One Nation, with its economic illiteracy (I refer you once again to the above AFR link to the wit and wisdom of former One Nation luminary David Etteridge), as an alternative government.
But it has been running a very clever grassroots campaign for several years, using ridicule and social media (particularly in the form of animation) to undermine the credibility of the major parties, and to present itself as a responsible and mainstream choice.
Right wing alternative parties do not usually make a significant impact beyond winning a few seats. There are two major reasons for this.
The first is that the Liberals and Labor are (or perhaps were) significant institutions, supported by an ecosystem in civil society.
Labor has the union movement and the various socially progressive movements and organisations, whilst the Liberals have several think tanks (the IPA and the CIS spring to mind), the Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Both of those parties also, due to many decades of existence, have a core movement of supporters, including not only thousand of grassroots members – the ‘true believers’, but also former political staffers and parliamentarians who remain committed to the party who gave them their careers.
The second reason that alternative parties fail is that they usually are centred on one leader rather than being a genuine grassroots movement.
Bob Katter’s Australian Party is a current example of that, with little support outside FNQ (much as many of us find him personally quite loveable).
Another is the vehicle, in its various names, funded and led by Clive Palmer. As the United Australian Party, Palmer claimed that his party had 100,000 members. However, did any of them actually pay membership fees or have any say when he would pack the party up after elections.
The DLP, in its heyday from 1955 to 1974, was not run by one personality, but was closely tied to B.A. Santamaria, whose Svengali-like presence in the backrooms did drive its decision making. His movement, and the various trade unions which remained affiliated to the DLP until its initial winding up in the late 1970s, provided a link to civil society that other conservative third parties did not have.
Cory Bernardi is, in my view, an even egregious example of the one man political party. He left the Liberals after he was reelected to the Senate to convert his emailing list (of which I was a subscriber) into a political party, the Australian Conservatives (something which I was wise enough to avoid).
He quickly persuaded the Christian based conservative Family First Party, which occasionally would win Senate seats in Victoria and South Australia, to disband and merge into his new party. He also persuaded Victorian state MLC Rachel Carling-Jenkins to abandon the DLP and join his party.
In the first of those above instances, an existing and successful minor conservative party with an existing grassroots supporter base and network was persuaded to abolish itself for the chimera of Bernardi’s rhetoric. In the second, the DLP lost its sole state MP, who then discovered after the event that Bernardi had no intention of running a full service political party (ie in lower house Federal seats or in state elections). He only wanted a vehicle for Senate elections.
He also persuaded some disillusioned long term Liberal party ranks and file members (I know at least two) to jump ship for his new movement.
Ultimately, when his new party did not draw the electoral success he was hoping for, he disbanded his party. Did any of those party members who joined him have any say? All he did was to destroy one existing third party and seriously damage another. Well done Tory Cory!
Now he, along with various other big political egos, has joined One Nation, a party which, in its current form, has a constitution which guarantees the undisputed leadership of Pauline Hanson.
One Nation has had a history of fragmentation over the past 30 years. Its current veneer of unity is unconvincing to me. But with the various grassroots protest movements campaigning against both state and federal Labor governments, and which include the sort of people unlikely to ever be seen in Liberal party branch meetings, it may for the first time be taking up roots in civil society and developing an ecosystem of its own.
If that is indeed the case, then One Nation may actually be, for the first time, becoming a real and viable alternative. It has happened before in other countries – with the collapse of established governing parties in Italy in the early 1990s and their effective replacement by parties further to the right, and with the merger of the long existing Progressive Conservative Party in Canada with the Canadian Alliance in 2003.
I do not think that the potential collapse of the Liberal Party would be a good thing for our democracy, much as they are so uninspiring at the moment. Most of the prominent defectors to One Nation have been men who, in public life, have shown erratic and irresponsible tendencies, and whose economic views range from intelligent (Cory Bernardi despite himself) to cheap populist (Barnaby). If these people were to have a greater say in the corridors of power than they have had an opportunity to in the past, their irresponsible and ego driven tendencies would ruin the country.
And it all traces back to Pauline’s comeback on Dancing With The Stars. Shame Daryl Somers, shame!
Lost For Words! 