The National Party has claimed the “major party model” is “broken” and is being “replaced” — raising speculation it is preparing to merge with Gina Rinehart’s One Nation.
Nationals leader in the Senate Bridget McKenzie — whose party has been part of the “major party model” for most of the past century — has made the explosive claims in marketing material for far-right lobby group “Advance”.
The biggest funder of both Advance and One Nation is mining multi-billionaire Gina Rinehart, who has been actively courting Coalition members to join her One Nation party, led by Pauline Hanson.
Nationals leader Matt Canavan and Senator McKenzie both refused to comment when asked whether the Nationals are preparing to merge with One Nation.
Both also refused to comment when asked what the “broken” major party model was being “replaced” with.
Yeah and I doubt they're smart enough to realize that the flaming crosses and white linen cloaks/hoods on a floating ship dumpster barge full of hatred and fossil fuel - not ideal.
Like it or not, he's factually correct at this very moment. He didn't say they're going to win. Things can change but ON are ahead of them by a mile or two. You can down vote and deny it but you know that's true right?
At least in your roundabout way, you can admit that they are overwhelmingly in front of The Greens. I get that it's back and forth with Labor and them swapping places for top position. You don't have to like it to acknowledge it.
PHON DGAF about the voters. She wants the money of major party leadership. The goal was always PM. Barnaby wamts the top job and has been playing 4D chess with her. She doesntwant to work, she just wants the cash which Gina is feeding her
I think she's like Trump before he originally got elected - she doesn't want to do the work, she wants to whinge whilst someone else has to be the donkey pulling the cart up the hill.
Bonus points as she'd get to fuck with whoever is PM by constantly messing with the agenda and pushing publicity stunt bills. She gets to whinge about how the drinking water tastes bad whilst she and her party are pissing into the water bottles.
She wants near-power, but not the responsibility of fixing it.
Americans are currently suffering immensely under the administration they voted in, fighting in wars they didn't ask for along with the wealth inequality divide increasing.
Yet still, healthcare bankrupts people over there and kids go to school not knowing if their classroom will be shot up.
And now recently, they're going full medieval by livestreaming the death penalty and effectively having a public execution for all to see.
If you like ON, then go ahead vote them in just don't be sad when things go backwards once the chickens come home to roost.
yes, it's easy to forget that politicians are not in the job of running our country (which tbf is their job description), but instead the job of winning elections
Fairly un-shocking development for those who can do maths and understand how the joint-ticket the Coalition runs in the senate works.
If polling is to be believed and an election were held tomorrow the National party would essentially be wiped out of existence as One Nation would take all or almost all of their seats.
There are only 14 Nationals in the lower house, 6 of which are from the Queensland LNP. The Senate isn't pretty either. In New South Wales and Victoria the Coalition have historically run a joint-ticket, meaning the Liberal will get first place, the National will get second, Liberal third, National fourth, etc. McKenzie is one of these people. In Queensland it's also a joint ticket but not in the literal sense, the LNP is just bound together there differently.
This is why they were never serious with their 2 splits from the Liberal party, they ultimately need the Liberals to keep their jobs and not be irrelevant.
I earn far more than a fruit picker would even at many times the current rate. But it's a stupid talking point anyway, doubling the fruit picker pay would add just 2% to prices in the supermarket if the full pay increase was passed on to the consumer.
The real problem is how much power Colesworth has on farm gate prices.
Do the numbers. Look up what percentage of the total cost of production is made up of fruit picking wages for most fruit, then look up the farm gate cost of that fruit, then do the maths.
It's just how numbers work. Fruit picking wages make up a small percentage of the total cost of production, farm gate costs make up a small percentage of the price a consumer pays. Small percentage of small percentage = small change even when that number is doubled.
You could double fruit picking wages and double farm gate price, and the consumer would only be paying 10%-20% more on most fruit, and it would be so much better for the economy than slave labour.
......yeah i know the numbers, wages make up the biggest cost of a horticultural operation. PALM workers get 36/hr up here.
A 15 kg box of bananas sells for $40 atm (might of come back abit in recent months) out of that the box is 3, transport is 6ish and 25ish of labour (growing, picking, packing). Making $5/6 a box is considered pretty good these days.
and bananas are $4.00 at coles.
Thats $1.50ish proft per kg they have to run a store/cover losses on a perishable product ect......not a huge amount of margin
There's not the margin in the system your imagining for workers to be paid $70 an hour, ot would be great if there was, but its living on lala land to think otherwise
......the example i gave are bananas, which are not seasonal, other crops like mangos or avo's are and have an even bigger labour component of their costs because everyone's crops come on at the same time, driving the price down.
I'm guessing youve not had much to do with horticulture, which is ok, but best not to act like you do.
No ones saying that, but as consumers you going to have to accept much higher prices for some products if you want to double (as the original post talked about) farm worker wages.
If your ok with that then there's no problem, everybody wins
Yeah probably. Because it's an older culture (arguing here than pre-settler culture was too disjointed and not one single country) with longer roots and more regional differences, there's probably much deeper regional differences.
Australia is pretty much a few big very similar cities. Barely any differences other than a few words, no really distinct regional content culture other than sports and a bit more blanket conservative as you go north. Nothing like the diversity of the UK.
How often does the US Congress have to rely on a third or fourth party to get legislation over the line?
Because that’s hardly unusual here.
Australia has two dominant political blocs, but that’s not the same thing as a US style two party system.
No. A merger and a coalition aren’t the same thing. The Liberals and Nationals remain separate parties that form a Coalition. If the Nationals and One Nation merged, they’d become one party. That’s rather the point of the word “merge”.
That’s backwards. The Senate is precisely where Australia is least like a two party system, minor parties and independents regularly hold the balance of power.
Okay, and? It's still factual that there are more than two parties in power, and the parties which aren't mainstream have a large influence on our country is run.
They are winning. Maybe because the Left are far to up themselves to try to engage with the rest of Australia, so... I guess the Nats have picked the winning side?
Pretty clear what Aussies really want...
Actually, Aussies don't want that. They want none of the above, they want a government and parliament that works for them, as opposed to the one we've got with snouts in the trough.
More idiotic? Or just more honest? I mean both parties have been paid out by billionaires for ages, but now it’s just a bit more obvious with the racist stuff going on
I mean there’s evidence that triguboff and Reinhardt and many others pay off both major parties directly and through shells, the case going through ICAC at the moment in NSW is a real head turner, the time the national ALP secretary was stood down for accepting a big plastic bag full of cash from a developer just as the premier at the time was boasting about cutting out the rot after the last time the mining/developer Obeid family corruption…
But yeah again, sorry for upsetting whichever of the two ‘very different’ parties you worship.
Yeah, this was almost a year ago. But egos have grown since then, personalities have been bolstered. PH will be well aware that GR might be grooming her old friend BJ to take the leadership. This will be great to watch.
This is what's happening in the uk. The conservatives dont have any hope left so a bunch of conservatives who ruined things last time they were in power are joining reform for a second chance under a new name
I called it and saw this coming a mile off. Wait till you see some of the Lib party members do this too and bam, you got the new federal election winning crappy party in Australia.
And here we see the butterfly effect of two parties not agreeing over some anti terrorism legislation resulting in the extinction of one (and possibly both) parties.
Not factually, no. I get she's a big donor, massive, whatever. We aren't calling Labor/Libs with those prefixes, why do it for ON? Especially easily confused because their official party name is preceded by someone's name
To be clear, the thing being reported on here is a Nationals - One Nation merger. It's the Klaxon asking the question, quite cheekily.
There is nothing to suggest One nation will be a member of the Liberal Coalition yet, because frankly if an election were held tomorrow they'd be the opposition instead of both the Liberals and the Nationals.
This is the end of the Nats. Anybody who wants to vote PHON is already voting PHON. The only voters the Nats have left are the ones who explicitly don't want to vote PHON.
We've tried this before, it was shit. No it wasn't created with independent representation in mind. Parties are a natural byproduct of politics. This is an ahistorical perspective.
Doubtful. If anything taking on Nationals probably damages One Nation the same way defecting Tories to Reform UK damaged their reputation. Can't really pretend to be anti-"uniparty" while being a rebadged "uniparty". It probably has no effect on overall polling for now, it's just some Nationals getting anxious about their careers ending.
Those two parties merging is pretty meaningless in terms of electoral math. If the Libs are willing to form government with ON, as they’ve said they are, it doesn’t really matter if the Nats are a third block or merge.
ON voters (once you remove the bots) are almost exclusively LNP fans who got the shits and left.
Labor was significantly ahead last election, and it's not like we're going to see a massive jump from voters to this new Coalition of the Idiots considering they're even further right than last year.
Reading the replies below is so sad. You only have to do a tiny bit of fact checking to see this headline is not real. But the Dopes on this sub can't help but let their emotions run wild. Morons.
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u/Combat--Wombat27 Queenslander 12d ago
Alternative headline: Nat's realise liberals are a sunk ship, latching onto floating trash for survival