That’s one implication of the Sunday Mail’s poll this morning which puports to show that Pauline Hanson would “storm senate”. Maybe. Their figures show her winning 30% of the vote which is enought for two senate seats. I don’t think this is likely – there was a similar surge when she was jailed – but if the polling trend continues I will have to revise my opinion she wouldn’t win a quota in a normal half Senate election and would need a double dissolution to have a chance. I think on balance, as the noise from the court case dies down, so too will her vote. Still, I note she may have found a new funding method for campaigns – Channel Nine and ACP have apparently bought exclusive rights to her story for $120,000 to $150,000. When was the last time they did this for John Howard or Simon Crean?
There are some other interesting aspects of the poll. While Pauline’s popularity is higher than ever, the One Nation state vote is well shy of its 1998 peak when it was the second most popular party in Queensland. On a state basis it is sitting on 12%, below both Liberal and Labor. Plenty of people will tell you that Pauline Hanson is a right wing phenomenon. If that’s so, why is it 7% of the Labor vote appears to have gone to Hanson while the Coalition has stayed stationary?
Another interesting aspect is that One Nation is still more popular than the National Party which is on only 8% of the vote. Makes you wonder why the brains trust at the Liberal Party ceded so many good non-Labor seats to the Nats in the coalition negotiations when this election was the one they could have really re-established themselves in non-Labor politics. The only credible explanation is internal factional politics. Also makes you wonder why the Nats are worried about fighting with the Libs on their urban flank – the rural flank looks even more dangerous. Peter Beattie should have little trouble carving up a fractured opposition of Nats, Libs and One Nation.

The first CAH award (Field of Technology) goes to the inventor of the leaf blower. This ridiculous device has contributed more noise and pollution to absolutely no positive effect than probably any other invention in modern history, possibly excluding the atomic bomb.
The first CAH award (Field of Media) goes to the person who dreamed up reality TV shows. I mean, live video of people sleeping in the Big Brother house (Wait, did I see a foot move then?)… Can TV possibly get any dumber?
The first CAH (Field of Politics) goes to the federal Liberal and Labor parties for ruining parliamentary question time. What was the key occasion of the Australian parliamentary system – when the government was open to direct question by the parliament – has been turned into a farce due to a multitude of pathetic Dorothy Dixes and and the refusal of ministers to actually answer questions. This is a big step in the rapid decline of our political system, and the last two prime ministers are especially responsible for it.

I got a couple of interesting responses to my “Anti-Greens” piece. So I want to say that, yes, Kyoto is a joke, it does almost nothing to halt global warming because it would need to be about 10 times stronger to work at all. But Kyoto is not really about fixing global warming, but starting a process of confidence building to start to fix global warming. Setting up fora, dedicating resources, defining the issues, that sort of thing. Hopefully it will move onto the real stuff before too long.
As for global warming and the weather, the problem is that global warming theory predicts a period of strange weather before it settles into hotter weather. So while any particular anomolous weather event could be anything, it is the pattern of strangeness that is relevant.
The environmentally conscious types (such as the Greens) may be wrong about global warming, because the science may be wrong, but at least they are paying attention to a potentially disastrous situation. If they sometimes get a little overwrought, it may be because new ideas always need a little energy to get heard, especially when there are such powerful interests trying to drown them out and hog the world stage.

It is good to see Pauline back on the front pages! This is because sometimes even I forget that the mass media is about creating news, not reporting it, and having Pauline on the cover is like a big sign saying “This is media-fabricated bullshit.”
Pauline was from the outset a media-created phenomenon. The red hair, the green eyes, the increasingly clingy frocks, the cute sound bites, they loved it. And now they can have another dance with her. Such a nice relationship.
Of course, I do wonder how Pauline’s new sympathy for jailees will manifest itself. Will we see a kinder, less bigotted Pauline Hanson party, or will Pauline just wanna get shot of the whole damn thing?

Apparently the writers of ‘Kath & Kim” have denied it is politcal satire, but I think it is the most trenchant critique of Howard’s Australia on TV. Here is a bunch of self-satisfied, brain-dead cretins whose lives revolve around domestic trivia in the hyper-materialistic suburbs. They think they are the last word in worldly sophistication, with a final opinion on everything. Even when they go on holiday, they wind up staying at the airport to consume all the special goodies there.
This is Howard’s Australia exactly. A country obsessed with its own trivial concerns, and too busy to worry about the rest of the world. Just keep the borders up and the easy life on tap.

This morning’s newspapers show Pauline Hanson at her best, and most journalists at their worst. Pauline is busy doing what she does best – playing the victim – while the press is by and large improvising on her tune. Most guilty is The Australian with its headline – The truth has set me free. Surely very deep apologies are owed to John 8:32 because The Courier Mail headline calls it correctly – They’re free, but they lied (headline hardcopy only).
Hanson and Ettridge succeeded in their appeal because the court found that the Crown had not proved beyond reasonable doubt that the 500 names submitted to the electoral commission were not members of One Nation. According to Justice de Jersey they each “filled in an application form headed ‘Pauline Hanson’s One Nation’”, which was processed by the party office. They were issued with a receipt and a membership card in the name of the party and their names entered into the records of the party. They each paid a fee “of the order of $40/$50”. “Applying orthodox contract theory…” they were members. So why did Hanson, Ettridge and the Director of Public Prosecutions think they weren’t members?
Well there was a tricky little clause (Cl 9) in the One Nation constitution that required the Management Committee – which consisted of Hanson, Ettridge and Oldfield – to “determin[e] whether to admit or reject applicants.” The oral evidence adduced from all parties is that Hanson and Ettridge did not intend that these people become members. However, the appeal court ruled that intentions give way to presumptions of objective fact.
Yet in Sharples v O’Shea & Hanson (No 6318 of 1998), the case that made this one necessary, Atkins J appears to accept that the evidence of their intentions was relevant because it was objective evidence, in the absence of any other, that the management committee had not approved any other members. Two of the justices – de Jersey and McMurdo – ought to have been quite au fait with this as they were part of the bench that unanimously upheld this ruling on appeal. The major difference is that Sharples’ case was a civil matter and they distinguished this one in part through the issue of whether it met the standard of proof (and also because not all the same witnesses or evidence was led).
Maybe it didn’t, but the question that is unanswered for me, is why the court proceeded from this to quash the judgement. The evidence in Sharples appears very strong. Surely it would have been more satisfactory to order a retrial so that the standard of proof matter – which appears to be easy to overcome when you read all of the judgements in these cases – could have been put to the test?
Or is it that the court has decided that it has had enough of Ms Hanson, that she has served time and the matter should be expediently drawn to a close?
Whatever, one thing is clear – not one Justice accepts that Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge believed there were 500 members of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation when they applied for registration. They all accept that this was a lie, just not necessarily a criminal one.
One of the results of this is that my post of yesterday is wrong – the Commission will not have to pay them the public funding afterall. In a result that would make Milo Minderbinder proud they may be innocent, but they still fraudulently registered a political party. Is this why the bench made dire warnings about the propriety of questionning judicial rulings and blamed counsel and the DPP for the matter getting this far?

Pauline Hanson has been acquitted, which puts my essay in On Line Opinion in an entirely different light. I have only quickly read the judgement, but in summary it finds that while Hanson may not have thought that people signing up to join her supporter’s group were in fact joining the party, it is arguable, at least to the standard of proof required in criminal trials, that some of those had. As a result, while she submitted a list of names to the electoral commissioner which she may have thought were not members of the party, they in fact were.
So we are presented with the situation where Hanson’s conviction is quashed not because of her intentions, but because she was too incompetent to put them into effect!
One of the side-effects will be that she receives an economic windfall. The electoral commissioner will have to refund her repayment of the $500,000 she originally received. On the not unreasonable assumption that the people who donated these funds to help out don’t want them back, Hanson’s One Nation will be one of the richest political parties in Queensland, ready to saddle up for the election next year and front up for another windfall from public funding.
Another side-effect is that it leaves those of her supporters suggesting she was a political prisoner looking ridiculous. The law followed its due process, although this did not stop Chief Justice de Jersey taking a swipe both at the adequacy of the funding of the Department of Public Prosecutions (who he believes shouldn’t have brought the case) and the solicitor who represented Hanson at the first trial (who he infers did not do as well as a barrister might have). His colleague Justice Mc Murdo criticises those politicians who suggested the process was political or wrong, while patting Alexander Downer and Peter Costello on the back for their restraint.
Stay posted for more. This is just the sort of thing the OLO Blogs are meant to cover.

It is an old trick of those power to try to steal the clothes of their critics and thus present themselves as the put upon underdog. This is why every conservative politician has to proclaim how much he or she hates government. So it should be no surprise that the neo-liberal power stucture has come out fighting against environmentalism in general and the theory of global warming in particular.
Here they are, having seen of not only socialism but Keynesiansim as well, ready to rule the world under the banner of ‘free markets’ when along comes the notion of global warming to spoil the show. Global warming is a problem because its root cause is the profligate use of fossil fuels that has provided the cheap power source for mass industrialisation across the globe.
And so they set up organisations and fund scientists to dispute the whole idea. They call it ‘junk science’ and point how many scientists are now making a living out of promoting the theory of global warming. They then contrast this self interest and bad science with the pure and selfless ideas of neo-liberal economic development.
Trouble is, this neo-liberal program of global transformation is based on theory that makes global warming look like rock hard science. The economic theory underneath neo-liberal ideology has NEVER been tested in the way climatologists, for instance, have to test their theories. And if you want to see a real industry of junketing and self promotion, look no further than the mega-business of neoliberal support for ‘market-led’ globalisation happening at a five star hotel near you.
There is nothing new in this rampant hypocrisy, but the problem remains that the overwhelming majority of relevant physical scientists argue that a phenomenon called global warming is underway. Maybe they know what they are talking about, and just maybe we should act on their warnings.
This does not mean abandoning economic growth, but is does mean being smarter about how we do it.