If you needed a reminder of how batshit this election campaign is getting, you might have tuned into Sky’s Paul Murray’s Live Pub Test last night, where four political mavericks– Independent federal MP Bob Katter, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, Liberal Democrats’ senate candidate Campbell Newman and UAP chairman Clive Palmer– partook in a faux debate in which nonsensical drivel reigned supreme.
Live from the Gold Coast, the four took to the stage in front of a wide audience, with Murray lauding the group as “all the big names, all in one place, ready to take your questions.”
Murray added that the debate “will be bigger than anything we’ve done before”, but we’re pretty sure he was alluding to the monumental size of ego and source of inevitable disinformation sitting before him.
Sky News Australia’s Brisbane Bureau Chief Adam Walters warned it will be “politics unplugged”.
“No party machine dictating the message it’ll be pure black and white all four combatants are known for never being short of fighting words,” he said. “Apart from what some see as their out there radical views they do have one thing in common and that is a similar voter base.
“You might call it the barbeque brigade those Australians who might have a thirst for a beer but absolutely no appetite for BS as they may well say in their vernacular.”
Within minutes “the debate” which could more aptly be described as a shitshow, descended into chaos.
Pauline Hanson was the clear drawcard, with the crowd’s applause deafening from the moment she was introduced. She played expertly to the circus telling the crowd “I’ve been named everything under the sun and I’m still here fighting for the people of Australia!”
On the first question she geared up a tirade that ended with her bellowing “If the Greens have this country they will destroy us – we’ll end up as a third world nation!”
“We are a third world country now and we don’t realise it!” Palmer declared emphatically.
It was essentially a battle of the bananas, with Katter soon warbling into a rant on China’s influence, before announcing apropos of nothing, that “Every boy in this country … should have access to a rifle!”
(Not the girls though).
Campbell Newman was there as a pretty irrelevant and unrecognisable sidekick (let’s face it). We’re still not sure what he offered to the debate.
And as things tailed off it was clear that the motley crew wasn’t actually all that motley. Their views so extreme that their only goal remains to shock sensible Australians into desperate terror and galvanise those who thrive off division. There was no real ideology, no plan for the future, no rationality, no reason.
But who cares when they’re achieving exactly what they set out to do?