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Barnaby or Hanson?

By Everald Compton - posted Friday, 21 April 2017


The Angry Vote is growing throughout Australia and is doing so at an ever increasing pace as voters grow more and more disenchanted with a political establishment which is so appallingly out of touch with the aspirations of voters.

Currently, Angry Voters see Pauline Hanson as their only vehicle for protest, but most of them don't like her personally. She is simply a political convenience.

But, even if Turnbull and Shorten manage to destroy her, an event which is highly doubtful, the Angry Vote will remain and grow even faster.

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The fact is that all those disenchanted souls need a new political home, another knight in shining armour.

The only possible candidate is Barnaby Joyce.

This raises an unanswered question.

"Will Barnaby take the Nationals out of the coalition and claim his, and their, place in the sun?

Let me try to answer it this way.

Malcolm Turnbull is in the twilight of his life as Prime Minister and of his political career. He looks like a Prime Minister, has the intelligence to be Prime Minister and tries to act like the Prime Minister, but fails embarrassingly because he lacks political nous.

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His situation is irretrievable as 90% of voters believe that he stands for nothing except wanting to be Prime Minister.

But, he will lead the Liberals into the next Election because no one else has the numbers to replace him, certainly not Abbott.

He will lose badly and be replaced as Leader by Josh Frydenberg.

Knowing this as an absolute certainty, there is no future whatsoever for Barnaby if he remains in the Coalition.

He can thrash Hanson by winning the Angry Vote as he is the best retail politician in Australia. But, he cannot do it while he remains with either Turnbull or the Coalition or both. He has to leave.

He will permanently remove Hanson if he ignores her realm of hate and racism and sticks to reviving the old fashioned values of the bush that he is supposed to represent – hard work, responsibility, mateship, decency, generosity, fair go and the building of a great Australia by investing in infrastructure which will control floods, provide water for droughts and lower the costs of transport.

My forecast is that Barnaby will lead the Nationals out of the Coalition sometime before the Queensland Election, break up the LNP in that State, and bury Hanson in that poll.

Then, he will win every rural seat in the Federal Election, plus some in the suburbs as many city dwellers feel they are being totally screwed.

He won't get enough seats to win power in his own right, but no one will govern without him.

Shorten will, by default, lead a minority government and will be utterly dependent on Barnaby. It won't last long.

Bill's problem is that there are very few voters getting around Australia saying 'Bill Shorten must be our Prime Minister'. Nevertheless, Malcolm has created enough enemies to enable Bill to stumble over the line with sufficient seats to put him in front of the Liberals.

Barnaby will do far better than Pauline ever dreamed of and will hold the balance of power in both Houses as he will destroy the entire cross bench at the same time as he demolishes Hanson.

He will find himself to be where the founders of the Nationals wanted the Party to be when it began a century ago. It was always intended that it would hold the balance of power at every election and demand justice for the bush. However, their MP's ratted on them, went into right wing Coalitions and sold their souls. Its time to correct that huge blunder.

So, what will be the long term ramifications of all of this?

Firstly, there will be a long overdue clean out of the Parliament. There are far too many hack politicians warming seats. We just have to make sure that the good guys survive – and there are some whose survival is important to Australia.

The ALP will be forced to shed its Trade Union base if it ever again wants to win power in its own right. We must never again have political parties controlled by a small coterie of power brokers.

For the same reason, the Liberals will be forced to shed the big end of town. They are more evil than any Trade Union as they are dominated by a culture of greed.

The Greens will just die because the days of narrow ideologies are at an end.

One day, there will be just two parties -centre left and centre right – with all elections publicly funded so wealthy guys or groups can no longer control results.

In the meantime, Barnaby will have put rural and regional Australia back on the political, economic and social map. No party will ever again fail to invest in the whole continent.

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This article was first published on Everald Compton.



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About the Author

Everald Compton is Chairman of The Longevity Forum, a not for profit entity which is implementing The Blueprint for an Ageing Australia. He was a Founding Director of National Seniors Australia and served as its Chairman for 25 years. Subsequently , he was Chairman for three years of the Federal Government's Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing.

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