Some people see Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews as the odd couple of Australian politics. Photo opportunities — like shovel-ready infrastructure pictures — often act as the glue for these otherwise polar opposites in national affairs. But the seriously weird pair in politics right now is Pauline Hanson and Jacqui Lambie.
These renegade senators are instantly recognisable by their first names, and their visceral approach to politics. It’s an approach that’s unique in a world of white-bread MPs who have otherwise emerged through the ranks of the political class — either as unionists, staffers, or lawyers.
In the current Parliament, Hanson, the Queensland leader of her eponymous Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, and Lambie, the Tasmanian maverick who is enjoying her third outing on the national stage, hold key positions in the Senate. As votes in the upper house get to the sharp end, Lambie and Hanson become particularly important. Either could be important hold-outs and the last woman standing.
Both senators entered politics fuelled by anger. Lambie was furious at the treatment she received from Veterans’ Affairs (VA), after being discharged from the army on medical grounds and denied compensation; Pauline was just angry with a world she saw as tilted towards the less deserving.
Lambie was full of vengeance, wanting to prove the VA wrong and, if she could, change the system. Hanson’s anger was fuelled by grievance, which was all too obvious in the springboard for her initial political success — a letter to The Queensland Times complaining about money spent on local Indigenous people in her adopted home of Ipswich.
Lambie is still fighting the VA, but is doing so in a more ordered, focused way — chasing change through determination and persistence. Hanson is still moaning about the way the First Peoples “cut in line” by receiving privileges she claims are not available to white Australians. Her latest stunt to make this point was a genuinely gormless attempt to climb Uluru, which the local custodians, the Anangu people, say will be prohibited from late next month.
Hanson has a very limited armoury when it comes to political tactics. She either takes sharp aim at minorities — shouting, 20 years ago, that Australia will be “swamped by Asians” — or pulls cheap stunts, like wearing a burqa into the Senate in August 2017.
Now, Hanson is prejudging an inquiry into family law in Australia, repeating the line that women in these fraught processes tell lies — a view she freely admits is rooted in the experience of her son Adam who had a bad time in the Family Court. More anger fuelled by grievance.
The government gave Hanson a bully pulpit on the issue by making her co-chair of the inquiry — a move many believe is payback for funnelling preferences towards the LNP in Queensland at the May election.
Meanwhile, Lambie is boxing smart in the way she approaches most political issues. She can be unpredictable but, unlike Hanson, she is focused more on outcomes. In order to overcome the government’s intransigence on lifting the Newstart allowance, she suggested increasing the hours recipients can work before they lose part of their payment. She is also staunchly uncompromising — as seen in her “quit or suffer the consequences” ultimatum to CFMMEU boss John Setka.
Notably, Lambie has a personal story that includes an attempted suicide, depression and chronic back pain; she also nursed her son through an ugly addiction to methamphetamine. All of this informs her political approach. In a profile in The Saturday Paper last weekend, her policy adviser Cameron Amos listed three things essential to understanding Lambie: “Jacqui backs the underdog. Jacqui believes in fairness. Jacqui is suspicious of power.”
If you were performing a political ultrasound on Hanson, you’d probably stop at one thing: Pauline believes she’s hard done by.
To paraphrase that genuine odd couple of the musical world — Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (AKA the Glimmer Twins) — Pauline might get what she wants, but Jacqui gets what she needs.
The other revelation in that excellent Saturday Paper article was that Lambie is smart and has taken to surrounding herself with smart people that she listens to and learns from…Hanson on the other is just stupid and prefers to surround herself with stupid people, so her chances of political growth are somewhere around zero.
I am glad she ditched Rob Messenger, who encouraged her to be another Hanson for a while.
There’s little difference between Hanson and Lambie. Both are inarticulate reactionaries, unprincipled shills and huge weeping wounds of spoiled ego and solipsism.
Lambie is worse in a way—she’s clearly more cunning than the near-cretinous Hanson, which just makes her more dangerous.
Still, between them, the two utter mediocrities have scored their names in history by helping the government to smash the welfare state and progressive taxation in one hit job.
That’s what nobody needs.
“She was practiced at the art of deception ….”
Some people get paid to present their opinions as news.
Is there a point to this piece ? So J and P are aggrieved nongs. They’re not nearly as bad as Craig Kelly for instance or plenty of other actual signed up Coalies.
And this is today’s lead article ?
You probably need to read the Saturday Paper piece to appreciate this one….but these two woman arguably have a lot more power than dimwit Craig Kelly, and one of them shows a propensity for both doing good and preventing bad….
I’m finding it hard to find a decent story to read today.
I agree
(Send that to the moderation team Crikey!)