Transcription
finish this sentence. Pauline Hansen is like >> Pauline is the closest [music] thing to Donald Trump in in Australia.
But even more so than Trump, people compare her to Farage.
Well, there one or two parallels, I suppose, between Pauline and me.
And on the surface, this makes a lot of sense. I mean, both have led reactionary anti-migration parties that have caused a conservative realignment within parliamentary democracies. But I actually think that it's a pretty shallow comparison and it only goes that far. I mean, it's only one rung remove from comparing Pauline to, I don't know, like Buzz Lightyear. After all, he deposed a creation from the 1940s because he was simply more appealing to a certain demographic. So, I dug a bit deeper beyond just migration and came to this conclusion. I wish Pauline Hansen was more like Nigel Farage, but to be honest, I don't think she's worthy of the comparison. And I think that One Nation is much less impressive than Reform UK. So I'm going to compare the history of the two side by side. And these are the categories that I'm going to use. And we'll start right here with their backgrounds.
Now when comparing the backgrounds of both Nigel Farage and Pauline Hansen, I think there's one clear thing that distinguishes the two. And that's that for Pauline Hansen, at least largely speaking, she got to where she got to by pure accident. Whereas if he went back to the 1990s and asked Nigel Farage where he wanted to be in the 2020s, this is exactly where he would want to be, minus the money scandal and the upcoming bi-election. I had the concept for this idea before all of that came out, and we'll see if I can get it up in time before I need to change the premise of the video.
Now, if you don't know Paul Hansen's legendary origin story, allowed to give me the full context. So, from 1991 to 1996, Paul Kading was the prime minister of Australia. And I think it's fair to say that he positioned himself as a pro-indigenous prime minister. Like after the native title decision was passed, he then enacted native title laws and there was a strong conservative opposition to this.
Now in 1996, it was John Howard who was challenging Paul Keading to be prime minister of Australia and Howard himself had earlier had his own run-in with a multiculturalism versus monoculturalism fiasco. And so in order to have some greater sense of mainstream appeal, Howard really needed to play down any aspect that he was a culture warrior. But this became a problem because just a couple of months before the 1996 election, the Liberals candidate for Oxley, Paul Lane Hansen, had her own things to say about indigenous people.
Now, because John Howard had built a campaign around calling Paul Keating arrogant and paying down the national debt, he was desperate not to have the culture war stuff end up in the Liberal Party platform whatsoever. So, the Liberals wanted nothing to do with Pauline Hansen, but it was a bit of an awkward one because the printing had already been done. And so, they basically just had to say, "Look, you can vote for Pauline Hansen, but if she gets elected in, she's not going to be able to sit with us."
But here's the thing about Oxley. Historically, it had very much voted labor because it was heavily workingass. But if you think about your average workingclass Queenslander, the word woke doesn't exactly come to mind. So the Oxley voters had gone off Paul Keading in the 1990s because they felt that he went on a bit of an indigenous crusade. And so in Pauline Hansen, they had the perfect protest candidate. They could really stick it to those rich liberals by voting for a disendorsed liberal candidate, but then they could also stick it to Labor as well by voting for someone who wasn't in labor. So due to an unre repeatable and freakish set of circumstances, Pauline Hansen was able to win.
Now if I'm to anticipate some of the objections to this, I imagine that people would say no, she won because she stood for truth or at least her perception of what truth is. But if I am to adopt Pauline Hansen's worldview and work within the confines of a worldview, the issue around indigenous people was only a minor waste of money. It was hardly a case of a genocide or a disregard for institutions or rank corruption that existed across the party that you would consider to be a worthwhile thing to leave a major political party over. Forgive me for thinking that Paul Wayne Hansen wasn't exactly playing 4day chess here and trying to get a brilliant origin story. I really just think it was a case of ill discipline. And I know that this has become a controversial belief in the 2020s when everything is unfiltered and uncensored. But actually having a filter is a good virtue to have in a politician. Seriously, if you look at all the different like political Instagram pages and new podcasts that have popped up recently, it's all like uncensored, unfiltered, raw, smackdown. But I think it's important to remember that being considered with your word choice was once considered a virtue. I mean, for that big Christian base that follows Pauline Hansen, need to remind you about what the book of Proverbs says. Funnily enough, for all the things that King Solomon renowned for, I don't think he was ever known for telling it like it is. Like, even Jesus himself had some times where he was pretty shrewd with his word choice. You know, the whole render to Caesar what a Caesars thing. Anyway, I digress. I don't think I need to prosecute the case that the missing verses from John A to go home and vote for Pauline Hansen.
But if you keep looking on throughout 1996, one of our nation's biggest tragedies actually played quite well into the hands of Pauline Hansen. So Howard won the 1996 election in an absolute landslide. But not long afterwards, we had the Port Arthur massacre. And in the aftermath of that, John Howard wanted to tighten the gun laws. But because gun laws are also a state matter, too, he had to negotiate a deal with the premers. And across the country, this was a pretty easy thing to do, except for the state of Queensland where Rob Borbage was the premier.
Now, Rob Borbage was a national and if you know your Queensland Nationals history, they had a pretty checkered past in disrupting John Howard. If you didn't know this, John Howard actually had a failed stint as the Liberals leader back in the 1980s. And in the buildup to the 1987 election where he was going to take on Bob Hawk, the Nationals premier of Queensland, Joe Balki Peterson, decided that he would launch his Joe for PM campaign in an attempt to usurp John Howard within the coalition. This massively destabilized Howard's campaign and he lost the election of Bob Hawk. But since then, the Nationals suffered a lot of brand damage as it became increasingly clear that the Balkke Peterson government was engaged in some very serious corruption. And so Rob Borbage tried to actually clean up the image of the Nationals. And so he vowed to actually cooperate with John Howard in allowing these firearms laws to get through. But if you think about it, the Nationals base of farmers and farmers in Queensland were far from pleased with this firearms ban going through. So now all of these farmers needed to find someone who they could get behind who would fight the good fight for them and they found Pauline Hansen.
After being booted by the Liberal Party, she firstly entered parliament as an independent and then she formed her own party called One Nation. [music] And so going into the 1998 Queensland election, Pauline Hansen had a pretty easy job. All she had to say was that she would fight the good fight for the farmers in Queensland and fight against these gun laws. Of course, all of these angry former nationals voters who wanted to send a message to Borbage happily flocked to Pauline Hansen and One Nation won 11 seats in the Queensland Parliament.
However, this all fell apart very quickly because a bunch of people felt that One Nation was run as a dictatorship and that they got no real say in the party. So, they left. And then on top of that, a couple of the others had some criminal affairs to deal with. One of those who had a runin with the law was Pauline Hansen herself who actually ended up being put in prison. And don't get me wrong, it is a gangster origin story to say that you were the first political prisoner in Australia, but it's just not true. So, I'll explain why she went to jail.
Basically, to become a valid political party in Australia, you need 500 signatures to prove that you have buy into your movement. And so, Pauline Henson got those. And then when she contested for the election, she used public money to do so. And the reason why we have publicly funded elections is to limit the influence of a wealthy private donor coming in and getting the government they want because they could outspend everyone else. And so after the 1998 election, Pauline Hansen claimed $500,000 of reimbursements for campaign expenses. Except the issue was that the list of signatures that she submitted wasn't actually signatures endorsing the One Nation political party. Instead, it was a bunch of signatures that endorsed something else called the Pauline Hansen Support Movement.
Now, don't get me wrong. If you look at the results of the 1998 election, clearly Pauline Hansen would have had no issue getting 500 signatures for the One Nation Party. But she submitted the wrong list. And so now we had a case of an illegitimate political party claiming $500,000 taxpayer dollars. So she was in prison for fraud. But then her legal team successfully argued that to prove fraud, you have to prove intent. And in her eyes, she didn't knowingly defraud anyone because she thought that the list that she submitted was the right list to submit. Basically, her legal team argued that it was a case of incompetence rather than malice. Look, my personal view is that it was nothing more than a misdemeanor and given her standing at the time, making her into a political martyr was just not worthwhile. And now we're living with the consequences two decades later because she can say that I was a political prisoner.
>> But uh many have described you as Australia's first and only political prisoner. Did your perspective of politics in general and the nature of this political game change after you were put behind bars? Because that's quite a shock. But really, I think the Pauline Hansen origin story shows that she was someone who was accidentally thrust into the spotlight of a major reactionary political movement, and she did not have the political skills necessary to actually keep that movement together, and she didn't even know the law because she didn't even submit the right paperwork. But the first iteration of One Nation was built around some pretty shallow culture war stuff. I guess guns would probably be the closest thing to actual tangible policy. And in my opinion, it was just such an underwhelming false start for what was supposed to be the far right in Australia.
But by contrast, I actually think that Nigel Farage's origin story is so much cooler. So he had the intelligence to go to university, but he decided not to to instead become a commodities trader in the city of London. And he was a member of the Conservative Party right up until 1992 when the Tory Prime Minister John Major signed the Master Treaty, which allowed for deeper integration with the European communities. Basically, the Master Treaty codified the existing European communities into what would become the European Union. And so the implications of that were actually pretty huge because it created a common market across the EU which then impacted things like trade regulations within each individual country. I mean, the movement towards the euro was put in place and it actually went beyond economics as well to incorporate defense. So there'd be a movement towards a common foreign policy and there was supposed to be greater consensus amongst the nations when it came to immigration.
Now Farage argued that this just centralized power far too much and that as one of the stronger countries the UK was paying welfare for other countries in the EU. Now, when it came to specifically trade, Farage argued that British farmers were getting a worse deal because member states were forced to buy from less competitive farmers on the continent. But even though a boring old Ramona like me would disagree with most of Faraj's points, I can't argue with the fact that there was at least substance underpinning the points that he was making. And to give credit to Farage, he was successful in overturning what Major had done. He was a founding member of UKIP in 1993. And then in 1999, he entered the European Parliament. In 2006, he actually became the leader of UKIP and led a contingent of 24 members. And then a decade later, he successfully led the Brexit campaign. Now, I will concede the point that Brexit was largely culture warsy because it was primarily built around migration, but at least there was an economic conversation to be had.
Anyway, Pauline went to jail, took about a decade and a half for her to come back into parliament, and in between actually nearly left to go to the UK. By contrast, Farage fought successfully for two decades and ended up winning in 2016.
But I don't just think that Faraj's background is more impressive. I actually think that when you look at the history of each Conservative party, overturning the Tories is a far more impressive feat than overturning the libs. So originally in the UK parliament, you had the Tories who were pro monarch and then you had the wigs who wanted more parliamentary power. But in 1834, a guy called Sir Robert Peele rebranded the Tories to become the conservatives. And he was saying that we don't oppose change, we just agreed to have moderated reform. However, during the potato famine, there was a debate within the conservatives as to whether they were pro- free trade or whether they like tariffs and protectionism. Peele was very much pro- free trade, but a guy called Benjamin Draeli led a protectionist revolt against him. And so, Peele actually ended up siding with the wigs to become the liberals. And by contrast, Draeli then led the remaining conservatives. And Draeli was an absolute beast for the conservatives. You see, in the late 1800s, everyone was talking about class. For Marx, he argued that you could get rid of class through economics. And for Disraeli, he argued that you could get rid of class through spiritual experience. And so he became a champion for something rather ironically called one nation conservatism. With Draeli's vision for Britain, there was no rich, there was no poor. Everyone was under the authority of the queen and her broader empire. For Draeli, you weren't loyal to your class, but instead you were loyal to the institutions that bind your country together, like your parliamentary democracy and the monarch who sits at the top of it. And so Benjamin Israeli really gave the conservatives mass appeal across Britain. And soon after in 1886, a bunch of liberals defected to the conservatives over Irish home rule. And then a couple of remaining liberals marched along until the 1980s, but really most of the liberals had been incorporated by the conservatives. And so then afterwards we had the emergence of UK labor.
So on the one hand you had the conservatives saying that we can elevate you out of your class through spiritual experience. Then on the other side we had Labour saying that we can elevate you out of your class through economics. And so as the big non-Labor block, the conservatives received a lot of backing from big business. I'm talking everything. I'm talking finance. I'm talking agriculture, manufacturing, property, even energy. And they ended up producing big prime ministers like Winston Churchill. However, Margaret Thatcher then redefined what it meant to be a conservative. Rather than offering, say a spiritual experience, her definition of conservatism instead reduced people down to just individuals. And she actually explicitly said there was no such thing as society. And so instead she went down the economic route saying that the Conservative party will offer you the maximum freedom to make as much money and make as much of yourself as what you want and that we will reduce the role of the state in determining your outcomes. After Thatcher they had a bunch of less impressive leaders and then they actually tried to appeal to Democratic credentials and they did this by giving grassroots conservative party members a chance to vote on who they want to be the leader and in 2022 this created all sorts of friction because the base wanted trust but the party itself were like no we don't want her we want Rishi Sunnak. And then the Tories really fell off in the 2024 election. But one thing that I didn't mention in that narrative there was that Nigel Farage drove a real wedge within the party during Brexit. Like once Boris Johnson agreed to back Brexit, it really was game over for David Cameron who wanted to have a sensible conservatism that was remain and the party has just never recovered since. And that was thanks to Nigel Farage. So once again to give Nigel Farage his dues, he has overcome an absolute behemoth of a political institution. This was a machine that was cultivated over centuries by absolute titans of parliamentary history. Robert Peele, Benjamin Israeli, Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill. Fraud brought that down in a decade.
When it came to big business, big business was rarely divided on who to vote for. They were strong supporters of the Conservative Party. Always have been. Yes, I take the point that structural weaknesses have crept into the party over time. But bear in mind, David Cameron won a fairly comfortable election in 2015. Yet, a decade later, Nigel Farajas brought the party down. And that for me is way more impressive than bringing down the Liberals.
So when most of our parliaments were popping up across most of the colonies in Australia, that was when the liberal conservative divide was going on in the UK. So we incorporated that into our parliaments. However, New South Wales was a bit of an exception to this. Rather than being defined as a liberal or a conservative, people were defined as being a free trader or a protectionist. So let's take Edmund Barton for example. When he was in the New South Wales Parliament, he identified as a protectionist first and a liberal second. And so when we federated, naturally we incorporated most of the New South Wales divide. And so there were protectionists, there were free traders, but now there was also the Labor Party as well. And from 1900 to 1909, the question became less and less about the tariff issue and instead more about industrial relations. [music] And so as the Labor Party grew to be the biggest of the three, naturally the free traders and the protectionists merged together to become the Liberal Party. However, within that new Liberal Party, they still had to sort out their stance on tariffs. Ultimately, it was actually the protectionist Alfred Deacon who got senior leadership and the free traders leader Joseph Cook became his deputy. So, the Liberal Party started with a pretty heavily protectionist identity. Because we were tariffing our imports, other countries would revenge tariff our exports. And because farmers had very competitive exports, it meant that no one was buying their stuff anymore. And so, rather than joining the Liberals, farmers across the different states formed their own localized version of a farmers party. And eventually, they became called the Country Party.
And one thing that I think is particularly interesting is that the liberals that we have today are not the same as the liberals that were around then. That's because during World War I, the Labour Party was divided on whether or not to implement conscription. And so, one of those proconscriptionist Labor guys was our prime minister, Billy Hughes. And so, he actually took his own supporters and defected away from the Labor Party. And then those defectors actually ended up merging with the Liberals to become the Nationalist Party. Now, the Nationalist government marched on until 1931. But what had happened back in 1929 was that Labour won the election and then not long afterwards we had the stock market crash and then we had the broader great depression and Labour was divided on what to do during the Great Depression. One of the guys from Labour used to be the premier for Tasmania. His name was Joey Lions and Joey Lions really opposed any sort of stimulus package. He thought that was reckless and he wanted to prioritize maintaining a good credit rating by not spending much money. And so then he led a bunch of defectors across to join the nationalists and instead they then became the United Australia party. So just so they're all on the same page here, free trader, protectionist, they become the liberals, then they become the nationalists, then they become the United Australia Party. And with each evolution, they incorporate more and more Labor guys. So they have a pretty strange blended identity for a conservative party. I mean, the vagueness of the name United Australia Party really gives the game away. There was nothing unifying about the party apart from the fact that we're not Labor anymore.
So the UAP governed in coalition with the country party and the country party was backed by primary industries and refining industries backed the United Australia party. But during World War II, the UAP get the boot and John Cirten is the war hero who leads labor in the nation's darkest hour. So it's looking rather unlikely that the UAP is going to come back into government anytime soon. So Robert Menses reached for the top shelf and pulled off the only thing that has ever worked before and that is a party rebrand. But no, I do need to be fair to Robert Menses here. The big thing that the UAP was lacking was an identity. And so he gave the conservatives an identity. Mensis argued that there was a group in Australia called the forgotten people. These were people who didn't particularly identify as being part of organized labor, but also people who were far from owning big businesses either. So Mensis argued that owning your own home was your path to liberty and your path to independence. It's your plot of land, not anyone else's. And he argued that his Liberal Party would help people buy their own homes. Now Menses was extremely successful in doing this. And in 1944, it looked like there was no prospect for this new Liberal Party to ever form government again. But they came back by 1949. But just like in the days of the UAP, the Liberals could rarely govern ever in their own right. And so they needed the help of the Country Party. But the Country Party wasn't always willing to play ball. So Mensis was of a more conservative persuasion, and he led them up until 1966. But before he resigned, he prepared his less conservative and more liberal treasurer, Harold Halt, to become his replacement. However, in 1967, Harold Halt died. And so, the country party actually held the Liberals to ransom when it came to the next leader. Because the country leader, John Mchuan, hated who was supposed to become the Liberal leader, Billy McMahon, he actually vetoed his ascension to the leadership and held them to hostage to the point where they instead had to put in John Gordon. And so, no matter how successful our non-Labor party was, there was routine fighting between those who represented secondary industries and those who represented primary industries. Again, like I said at the start, Joby Peterson pretty much sabotaged John Howard's 1987 campaign.
So, let's just put the country party or what would later become the Nationals to one side here and focus in on the Liberals, who I hope they have an ironic name, but were the primary conservative party in Australia. One of the things that made them so successful is that they were able to powers share between those who in the 1800s would have been a liberal and those who in the 1800s would have been a conservative. Like I just alluded to then if we went back to the 1800s ment would have been a conservative and halt would have been a liberal. Again this pattern played out with John Howard because in the previous century John Howard would have been a conservative but his number two Peter Costello definitely would have been a liberal and so for a long time in Mensy's liberal party was actually very effectively shared between those who were conservatives and those who were liberals. However, this wouldn't survive beyond John Howard. If you have a look at all the Liberal leadership challenges from 2009 to 2018, there's a pretty common theme that unifies them together and that's that it's a big struggle for the identity of the party. So Tony Abbott knocks Malcolm Turble in 2009 over the ATS. Turbo gets his revenge in 2015 over we need, you know, more sensible leadership and just a less conservative prime minister. Then Turbull gets dumped in 2018 for being too cozy towards environmentalism. And then Scott Morrison is put forward as this compromised candidate who's supposed to neither satisfy the conservatives in the liberals nor really satisfy the liberals in the Liberals. And it just didn't really work out that well because even Morrison's biggest defenders would say that he at least has the appearance of standing for nothing. So once Sko lost the 2022 election, there was only one real candidate who could possibly take over and that was Peter Dutton. And I'm not even going to say that Dutton ran a conservative campaign because nothing about his campaign met the hallmarks for historic Australian Liberal Party conservatism. He ran a reactionary Trump-like campaign.
Now, when it comes to the 2025 election, I am just talking off the cuff here, so forgive me if I have remembered this incorrectly, but to the best of my knowledge, I can't remember a single time where Peter Dutton invoked our place in history. Like, this is what John Howard would do quite consistently. Like, we are here because ex people in the past have led us to get to this point, and that's why conservatism is great. And I don't remember an example of Peter Dutton doing that. Instead, I just remember him playing like reactionary culture war politics. But just like we're seeing with Angus Taylor right now, the issue for Peter Dutton was that there was a greater appetite for culture world politics amongst One Nation voters who were now starting to become just a little bit more surgeent. And then to his left, you know, the kind of people who would have voted for Malcolm Turbo, well, by 2025, they were starting to vote for these tales. So, even though Peter Dutton ran a far from effective 2025 election campaign, I don't really think there was that much in way of personality that was ever stopping people from being dragged to either side.
Anyway, this is about Pauline Hansen. And all of that there is to say that I don't think it's that impressive that Pauline Hansen took down the Liberals. Historically, our non-Labor party has always realigned itself whenever it's found politically hard times. That's just the ironcloud rule of Australian political history. Whereas in the UK, most of big business put their money behind the Conservatives, in Australia, it was never entirely put on the Liberals anyway. You had the Nationals that was largely propped up by primary industries bunny and then after the 2025 election, people like Gina Reinhardt, big primary industries magnates, started throwing their money behind One Nation anyway. So, it really isn't the case that just through sheer charisma or through sheer authenticity or through sheer determination that Pauline Hansen was able to overcome the odds and in this David vers Goliath battle take on the big business party. She's now getting big business backing. But before we get to dissecting her abundant charisma, if you're liking the fact that we're covering something a little bit more contemporary and you want to see more contemporary dissection of Australian politics, it's what we do every week over on the Patreon. Honestly, Adrev makes me like no money at all. So the Patreon and the Bolden Academy is what entirely funds Mr. M. So it's greatly appreciated and I'd love you to join.
And speaking of charisma, I want to talk about this category, the persona of Nigel Farad versus the persona of Pauline Hansen. Now this might seem like a really strange grievance for me to linger on, but I promise it's a very sincere grievance. Um, speaking of grievances, Pauline Hansen, she loves grievance politics. And what annoys me about Pauline Hansen is that she uses grief as politics, but she doesn't know how to insult. Like prime Trump and even Farage today knew how to deliver a mad call, but Pauline Hansen is just so incapable of delivering a punchline. Like seriously, imagine we're back in 2017 and I am making an SJW get owned compilation. Imagine trying to make one about Pauline Hansen. The Sakurus in fact represent my vision of a multicultur of a monocultural Australia. [laughter]
>> Oh, obviously Pauline Hansen has no showmanship, but even just beyond that, she can't debate. Yeah, like I obviously don't agree with many of Nigel Farage's points, but it's not as though he can't debate.
>> You appear to have a loathing for the very concept of the existence of nation states. Perhaps that's because you come from Belgium, which of course is pretty much a non- country.
>> And so obviously for Pauline, this is where she's really needed some help. And I think she has been bolstered by Barnaby, who is a much more skilled debater. The issue is that it's not July every month of the year for Barnaby, and that does impede his ability to debate. Like again, I come back to this point, but from a minority position, Nigel Farage engineered Brexit, which has pretty much broken the brains of UK politicians. I might not like it. I might not agree with it. I certainly don't agree with the morality of it. But in a way, he has earned the right to say this.
>> Isn't it funny? You know, when I came here 17 years ago and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well, I have to say, you're not laughing now, are you?
>> Yeah, Pauline Hansen obviously has never been in government before, but like Farage, she did start from a minority position. But what's she done policy-wise? What's one major policy contribution that has come from Pauline Hansen? I'm not even saying good policy or bad policy. I'm just saying what's a major policy that's come from her.
Now, the final category that we'll look at is their ability to manage splinter groups. And I think one of the things that has gone Pauline Hansen's way is that because she has contradicted herself so many times. I still don't really know, apart from just vague anti-migration stuff, what she actually purports to stand for. But in a weird way, all of those contradictions might actually work in her favor because it's enough to keep this coalition together because you're not clearly defined on anything which puts people outside of the church. I don't know. If I'm to hazard a guess on the future, I might say that possibly there's an anti-Israel faction that breaks away from One Nation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
But one of the issues that Nigel Farage is having to manage right now that Pauline Hansen hasn't had to manage is dealing with a splinter group. So, right now you've got Rupert Low and Restore with their like super maxi nimbus 2001 version of reform. And if you know anything about soccer, ask Southampton fans what their thoughts on Robert Low are. He basically ran that club into the ground. And though I spent a lot of this video actually praising Nigel Farage, I think his abilities have certainly been nerfed by his own private love of a dollar. And we'll see what ends up happening with Restore. I'm recording this the day after Rbert Low went on Joe Rogan. And we'll see what traction they end up getting. But Nigel Farage has at least had to show some statemanship to keep reform together.
But at the same time, I also think it exposes a massive structural flaw that exists in both of these parties. Often when we talk about political parties, we define them by ideas more than anything else. like choose the party that best reflects your principles or choose the party that best reflects your ideas. I don't want to say that's a bad way of dealing with things, but I think the thing that is missing is affiliate organizations. If your party is purely defined on the merit of your ideas, as soon as you encounter the reality of going into government, which means you have to compromise on those ideas to get anything done, then a purer alternative can always pop up on either one of your flanks. And one of the more interesting patterns that I have observed across democracies is that parties with affiliate organizations tend to have longevity. So, the Labour Party is obviously largely funded by unions and has affiliate membership with them, which means they're not just saying we're proworker party. They actually have a level of accountability to organizations whose sole job it is to represent workers. So, let's just leave my personal bias to the side and choose a party that I wouldn't vote for like the Republicans. The Republicans have been very successful with affiliate organizations. NRA membership and obviously from my perspective, regrettably church membership, but at least up until Trump, NRA membership and church membership actually gave a degree of accountability to an external organization for the party that gave them some sense of structure outside of just ideas. If you go to Germany, the Christian Democratic Union is accountable to the Catholic Church in Germany. Now, obviously, we can debate the merits of each individual affiliate organization as they come. But what these affiliate organizations do is create sustainable limitations for the party, which usually ends up helping the party in the long term because they are bound by a structure and they are bound by a select group of personnel. By contrast, not only can ideas either be in vogue or out of vogue at any given time, but they can be tough to implement and so any party can pop up to the left of you or pop up to the right of you and say that we're going to do it pure and we're going to do it better. It's an issue that reforms facing right now and we'll see for One Nation if that happens for them as well. But if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that Pauline Hansen would very much struggle to deal with an anti-Israel splinter group that pops up out of one nation. I don't know. Think of it as pegging a currency to an actual standard of material value, like a good standard or back in the day, a gold standard.
The non- labor party in Australia, I think, has always struggled with the fact that they've never had that big affiliate organization. Yeah, you might have your business councils or some other groups that play a loose role, but nothing is all-encompassing as either a union or a church. And for One Nation, that's going to be a huge challenge. What affiliate organizations can they draw upon to actually create stability for the party? So, if you want to see if unions are a good standard to peg your party with, go click this video right here. And my camera has died and that word choice is probably playing right into the hands of people who love One Nation. We're going with