Trash talking: Pauline at the Press Club

Won’t somebody spare a thought for the new patron saint of the National Press Club, Pauline Hanson? She’s there to sort Australia’s trashy media out and set them on the right track because Pauline is sick and tired of the press, thank you very much, sick and tired, and tired and sick, and oh my wig and whiskers, how many times does she have to tell you Press Club people how sick she is of you? 

The only woman in Australia who says her vowels backwards was there on Wednesday, standing in her favourite position – in a spotlight on a stage talking about herself. Saint Pauline took to the stage at the National Press Club and whined endlessly of how sick and tired she is of everything she comes across. Which does leave you wondering: why, after thirty years of Pauline being so sick and tired on repeat, she doesn’t just bugger off and do something else.

But do not ask Pauline proper questions. Do not push Pauline on anything because even though she shrieks for free speech, that doesn’t mean she wants your free speech, and if you do, that voice like a budgie drowning slowly in a vat of vinegar will rise to crystal shattering levels and Pauline will tell you you’re trashy, trash, trash. And if there’s one thing you can say about our Pauline – she completely understands trashy.

After thirty years of having had a gutful, why is Pauline and her endless victimhood suddenly the flavour du jour? Her licensed handler, James Ashby, will tell you Pauline is currently having a moment, and never let it be said that our Pauline is a woman who neglects her own enormously healthy bank account or her own ego. Pauline has made herself and her side-kicks rich on the back of being sick and tired, and now she’s moving into the second stage of her Sick & Tired Tour, riding the attention wave created by Satan’s greatest duo: commercial pollsters and the mainstream media.

Apparently, our Pauline and her party of Australian-flag-wearing rodomonts are surging in the polls. Nobody at the Press Club bothered to interrogate why that suddenly was or whether these figures were truly organic in nature, or influenced by the tens of thousands of social media ghosts being pumped into Australian forums from overseas. Or even connections like the totally coincidental podcast of Karl Stefanovic who has suddenly emerged after 30 years in the media as Karl the Kooker King. But why bother digging below the surface to analyse, when you can listen to Pauline tell you how much she hates you?

It’s one of the great curiosities of Australian politics that Pauline Hanson is worshipped by the very people she hates. Pauline loudly shrieks that she is actively and openly plotting against working people. She hates them. She lies to them. For a group of people who claim they love One Nation because they’re sick of politicians lying, why they’re happy to watch Pauline lie to her back teeth about Australians and how she will destroy their rights while she stands there reading as if it’s her first time seeing words on paper will forever be a mystery.

Her opening remarks at Wednesday’s Press Club speech included upbraiding Channel 9 for their alleged inaccuracies about her private plane – and what struggling Australian unable to meet mortgage payments would fail to sympathise with Pauline’s $1.4 million private plane problems?

Only five minutes in, Hanson was brandishing fresh culture wars’ bait. “Don’t expect a divisive Welcome To Country from me,” our Pauline said divisively, because according to Pauline, the Ustrayan public are sick and tired of not being listened to. If you’re wondering how a short, occasional public greeting relates to Australian’s cost of living, or Australians not being listened to, don’t ask Pauline. She didn’t specify. It’s not about the content of the bottle, people – it’s about the colourful label.

None of it has to make sense, and none of it does, because while the media she’s so sick and tired of sit there eagerly taking notes, waiting to tap politely at her nonsensical wafflings, she barges on regardless like Cleopatra arriving in Tarsus on her fabled golden barge while all around her bow. “Climate change isn’t real and solar panels are taking over Australian farms!!!” This is such an obvious, transparent lie, perhaps a journalist will question her on that later… and none do. “Babies in Australia are aborted the week before they’re born!!” A staggering piece of bullshit of such staggering proportions surely some journalist, somebody anywhere, will pull her up on that too – but none do.

Pauline tells us we have to go back to being monocultural, which sounds like something a doctor prescribes anti-fungal pessaries for, but still nobody pushes back on how exactly a country made up of 200 different nationalities will suddenly all start eating meat pies and sauce and dancing around a Vegemite jar.

Her schtick and lies about Fortress Australia is such clear bullshit, such transparently nonsensical, impractical, unrealistic garbage, you hope somebody somewhere will ask her about it, but this is the National Press Club after all, home of the weapons manufacturer’s lucrative sponsorship deals, and a Sky News journalist as president, one who allows our Pauline to go twenty minutes overtime but doesn’t see fit to add that extra twenty minutes into his fellow journalist’s question time.

Nobody asks about the sudden and timely coincidental connection between Gina Rinehart’s massive donations, Barnaby Joyce’s bizarre defection and Pauline’s frequent visits to the USA and the surge of One Nation in the polls that the pollsters keep selling to the news sites to keep selling the advertising to keep the journalists in a job. Despite the fawning of some of the C-grade level political journalists over her Press Club performance, it was hardly Pauline wading into the lion’s den. She was asked a mere four questions, with no follow up questions allowed and the final question sent her into such a fit of haranguing insults against the journalist Sarah Martin, abuse that no journalist in the room or the moderator bothered to say a word about, you can barely say our Pauline was on dangerous turf.

The only thing that seemed to put a pause in her gish-galloping about the OMNICRISIS! enveloping Australia with all of the Muslims running around without ankle chains on and transgender people on their phones at work and coal not being used enough in the Human Rights Commission, was the slow unrolling of a protest banner from Get-Up – which frankly, was about the most interesting thing that’s happened at the National Press Club for some time.

Pauline finished up by asking her reluctant moderator if the protest slide stunt was a first for the Press Club. She looked clearly excited by the prospect of placing her long-suffering self front and centre of an issue yet again and being able to self-dramatise about all the firsts in her life, which none of us could care less about – but Pauline insists on ramming home her victimhood every opportunity she gets because Pauline has had a gutful. 

What Pauline worked out very early in her grift is that people are uncomfortable with change. And change in politics, from progressives or from Labor, always involves shifting the status quo. It’s easy for regressives like One Nation to point fingers at that, because they’re not the ones moving anything. It’s safer in politics when you don’t move, don’t try to shift the dial. That’s also why Pauline’s One Nation is hijacking Australians at the moment, because in an unsafe and uncertain world. Saying you’re going to stop everything, sit still and stay safe is enormously appealing, especially when it’s accompanied by reassurances that Pauline will fix the cost of living, and homelessness and create jobs for everyone by, well, by removing worker’s rights, cutting childcare and forcing everyone to speak English.

In One Nation world, none of this has to make sense – it just has to get attention. Like Pauline’s incessant mantras that she is sick and tired and has had a gutful, it’s all about the attention factor, and nobody crawls over hot coals for attention more than our Pauline who would chase a laser pointer in the dark if she thought it would get her an extra second in a spotlight. After listening to her endlessly moan last Wednesday about her four key culture-wars totems – the media, immigration, climate change and transgender rights – we can only conclude that yes, Pauline Hanson certainly is sick. And Pauline Hanson certainly is tired. So very, very tired.