Election 2016: My Tilt at Windmills, by David Archibald, who was going to run as an independent for the Pilbarra in the recent West Australian state selection, but eventually ran as One Nation’s candidate. Here are selections from his tale of bent media, mad taxes, fabricated outrage, and democracy.
I have had more than ten years before the mast fighting the global-warmers. Early on in that interminable campaign, when I talked to federal politicians on the subject their eyes would glaze over. I realized they had no interest in stopping the harm to the country. In fact, when a Perth businessman hired a private room in a restaurant so that a few real scientists could give a briefing to Julie Bishop and Mathias Cormann, the response of those two was “Change public opinion and we will follow public opinion.” No leadership, no sense of right and wrong, no inclination to do the right thing for the country if it meant the slightest bit of effort on their part, or risking any of their political capital. …
What has happened in WA is that ministers have had no interest in the running of their departments so the green/Labor-oriented public servants run amok. One example is the environmental clearances that are required before any work can be undertaken on the ground. For the oil industry, that means hiring a botanist and a zoologist to walk the path of intended roadworks – that is to bulldoze a track. The cocky on the property can bulldoze at will and mineral exploration permits don’t require such clearances. It is because of a perception that the oil industry has money that the public servants require that the industry hire their consultant mates in the environment scam. Similarly, on an Aboriginal heritage clearance, the Aboriginals might be happy to do it by helicopter in a couple of days but the anthropologist might require that weeks be spent walking the whole route – because he is paid on a day-rate. …
If I am to have any moral standing, I have to endure the unendurable and lead by example. …
Initially I was going to run as an independent, a quixotic and foolhardy notion. Then a friend in Canberra phoned and told me that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) was polling at about 30% in the seat of Pilbara. That sort of number was possible given that PHON was polling at 27.2% in Townsville. So I signed up as the PHON candidate for Pilbara. That was aided by the fact that the male half of the couple that had run PHON in WA for the last 20 years, Ron McClean, had bought all the books I had ever published, before he had even met me. I have a lot of respect for Pauline Hanson. She is a latter-day Joan of Arc – saving her country from foreign invasion. She is also our Nelson Mandela – a political prisoner put away on trumped up charges. Of course there are a couple of points of difference with Nelson Mandela. Our Pauline has never been recorded singing about killing white people. …
The ABC campaigns against David:
On the way north, I was interviewed on air by one Joseph Dunstan of the ABC Karratha office. When he asked what I thought of Pauline Hanson’s comments on Aboriginals a couple of weeks prior, I replied that I hadn’t heard them. When he, in turn, said the ABC was a reputable organization and I could trust his word that Pauline Hanson had said things that were not completely laudatory of Aboriginals, I countered by saying that the ABC promotes global warming, which is a big nonsense and therefore the ABC cannot be believed on any matter. …
When I got to Newman, I received an email from one Arthur Stephen who said he was a PHON supporter. I replied that I would be at the Australia Day ceremony the following day. Later that evening I was copied in on another email from Mr. Stephen in which he told a third party that he had misled me that he was a PHON supporter. … Mr. Stephen appeared and started shouting to the crowd that I was a climate change denier in the pay of the oil industry, and that I wanted to close down the Aboriginal communities out in the desert. He had made his own little protest sign. Such attention right at the beginning of my campaign boded well. The CEO of the East Pilbara Shire stood nearby, concerned that his function might be marred by fisticuffs. But how to end the verbal standoff with Mr. Stephen? It was becoming tedious. So I announced I needed a photo of my newest best friend and handed my phone to the CEO to capture the image. Mollified, Mr. Stephen waddled off. How did Mr. Stephen get my email address? Most probably supplied by the ABC Karratha office. …
The next thing that happened in my campaign is that the ABC did their best to get me dis-endorsed as a PHON candidate. Mr. Dunstan from the ABC Karratha office went through my published scribblings and found something that suited his purpose in a Quadrant Online article on lifestyles choices. As I point out in the article, these days we know what causes pregnancy and everyone who gets pregnant outside of marriage is a volunteer. There is no reason why any of the rest of us should pay for that lifestyle choice. Paying single mothers to be single mothers started with Bill Hayden in the early 1980s because he felt guilty that he didn’t do the right thing by a woman he got pregnant at university.
The ABC went to town on single mothers. A Washington-based friend emailed to say he had heard of the commotion. A friend in Sydney said that he was listening to the news on the radio – the first item was about Donald Trump, the second item was about me. The other media operations got in on the act. The couple house-sitting for me in Perth reported that Channel 9 had a woman sitting in car parked on the street in front of my house at 7.00 am the following morning. When she was approached, she said that “movement had been detected in the house”. …
There is plenty in my scribblings for the ABC to froth at the mouth at. But they settled on single mothers. I got plenty of free advertising and name recognition as a result, for which I am duly grateful. But I still believe that the ABC and the SBS should be wiped from the face of the Earth, including the rural service. Nothing must remain. Prior to the 1996 federal campaign, some ABC staff were going onto contracts so they would have to be paid out if Howard closed them down. Now they treat the conservative side of politics with complete contempt. They are unafraid of any consequences for their behaviour, because there are none. …
And The Australian:
The Australian isn’t any better. That organ sent one of their journalists, Andrew Burrell, and a photographer to the Pilbara. I was one of those interviewed, for two hours plus another half hour of photography. What was written up was selected quotes to make me look like a self-important loon. It was not necessarily malicious, as an ABC profile would be, but everyone must conform to their allotted stereotype. It saves thinking. …
Government waste and stupidity in NW WA:
The waste and stupidity in keeping communities way out in the desert is mind boggling.
For example, if a householder in a housing commission dwelling in Marble Bar reports a defunct lightbulb, two employees of the contractor engaged by the state government to fix housing will set off from Port Hedland on the 250km journey to Marble Bar. Employees aren’t allowed to travel alone in remote areas now for supposed safety reasons and that is why there are two in the vehicle. When they get to the front door in Marble Bar and knock on it, the householder may or may not be home. So, the WA taxpayer spends $1,000 to knock on the door and possibly replace a $2 lightbulb. That is the mentality that runs these departments. …
Another example – a helicopter pilot who was flying across the desert was attracted to something shiny below. He landed at an abandoned settlement of three houses and found the generator still running. It would only stop when it ran out of fuel, months later. Then the cylinders will have glazed up from running at idle and it will be replaced by federal or state taxpayers at a cost of $20,000-odd. Contract air services are engaged to run supplies and a taxi service to Aboriginal communities in the desert. Broome, Katherine and Alice Springs airports buzz like hornet nests each morning with Cessna 102s taking off. The most profitable run for these pilots is when a community runs out of playing cards and tobacco.
The Aboriginals of the northwest may have poor health on average but that is not because they are underserviced. On the contrary, there are plenty of health services devoted to Aboriginals and they compete for customers, to the point of advertising on radio for clients. They get paid per service performed – so they advertise free needles for drug addicts, for example. Of course, in doing so, they are facilitating a debilitating lifestyle choice. But there is money to be made, even if it is on the backs of black people. …
Final comments:
A journalist from the West Australian phoned me. … So far I had said something derogatory about just about everyone except the Jews (yes, really). As my one Jewish friend said, she was trying to bait me. This is what journalism in this country has degenerated to: baiting conservatives. …
The Nationals … are a form of legally sanctioned mafia in which productive elements of society are shaken down to enrich members of the club, not just for buying votes in rural electorates. For example, there is a cattle yard in the northwest that was closed down on a technical pretext so as to remove competition from a National Party-associated cattle yard in the district. There was more than a whiff of National Party thuggery and standover tactics in the Karratha region. …
Labor, it is the political wing of the union movement. And because the union movement is another mafia-like shakedown operation, the philosophical component is outsourced to the greens. …
GST is a now a big issue in WA, with the state permanently disadvantaged. Witness this graphic of what has happened to GST distribution since 2001:
… Why does the super-clean and pampered ACT get more than they put in? Barnett ended up being completely loathed in WA. Now that he is gone, that loathing will transfer to anyone not wanting to fix the GST system.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
