Party crashers
With Coalition tensions rising, the scuttlebutt turns to who might follow Barnaby Joyce in defecting to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
With today’s news that Nationals Leader David Littleproud has defeated the spill motion against him, and with the campaign against Sussan Ley’s leadership turmoil seemingly in a holding pattern for now, attention turns to the next bit of gossip consuming Canberra: who is going to defect to One Nation?
Pauline Hanson’s party is experiencing unprecedented polling momentum amid the Coalition chaos — as we have been covering with our Capital Brief/DemosAU poll — and secured its biggest candidate coup to date with the defection of former Nationals leader and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce.
Joyce told Sunrise this morning that another defection could be announced within 24 hours, with media attention circling South Australian senator Alex Antic, former NT chief minister Adam Giles, and Cory Bernardi, the firebrand former senator who flamed out of the Liberals in 2017 to form the ill-fated Australian Conservatives party.
Scuttlebutt or not, few would argue these are genuine heavy hitters with live political influence. It’s instructive to compare it with what is happening in the UK right now, where the realignment is even more acute.
