Kirk Muddle

Warren Pickering exploring his sexuality isn't an issue, and nobody is arguing otherwise. Malcolm Roberts may, of course, require a separate briefing. Nor, on their own, are his drug use or three DUI convictions. People fuck up. People change. People can deserve grace. But grace is exactly what One Nation has spent decades refusing to extend to people it finds politically useful to demonise. Immigrants are criminals. Single mothers are welfare cheats. Muslims can’t be trusted, becuase "there are no good muslims". Australia will be "swamped by Asians". There’s something depressingly familiar about this strain of conservative politics. Gay people are easy to condemn until a conservative discovers their own son is gay. Voluntary assisted dying is easy to oppose until a conservative watches someone they love endure a long, painful death. Then, suddenly, complexity exists. Suddenly lived experience matters. Suddenly compassion becomes possible, and empathy activates when the suffering enters your own house. Now their own leader has a complicated past and we're being invited to discover nuance, forgiveness and redemption, Sure, but also, fuck that. If your compassion only extends to people once their story becomes your story, it isn’t much of a moral principle. When you’ve built a political movement denying grace to others, you don’t get to demand it the moment you need some for yourself. One Nation built a political strategy out of hate and grievance, and tried to dress it up as patriotic principle. That's why the hypocrisy is so complete when the rules suddenly change for their own.

CPAC is dead. Day 3 of the grand intellectual pageant features Bridget 'Spreadsheets' McKenzie, Pauline Hanson freshly disembarked from her Italy sojourn with Gina, and introductions from a former UK PM who lost a battle of endurance to a lettuce.