Pauline Hanson James Ashbury One Nation NRA scandal Al Jazeera Steve Dickson
(Image: AAP/Dan Peled)

Crikey readers spent the weekend discussing the ongoing fallout of the One Nation NRA lobbying scandal, exposed last week by Al Jazeera. As some pointed out, it would be interesting to see One Nation scramble to spin the story had it not been conducted by a foreign organisation. Elsewhere, readers discussed the pattern of LNP donors going bankrupt (in this instance, Linc Energy). 

On Al Jazeera’s One Nation sting 

Steven Westbrook writes: There is a bigger issue. The desire of organisations to control their message leads to less transparency. This is surely part of the reasons for the profusion of royal commissions: PR spin doesn’t work terribly well in the face of aggressive counsel who are able to find out what the lobbyists don’t want us to know. In this case, the journalist’s primary interest was less One Nation as such than getting past the NRA’s secrecy and crafted public statements and like any wall the inventive will find a way around it. This program is also a call for vigilance as the libertarians try to break down Australia’s cultural resistance to their toxic creed.

Venise Alstergren writes: Despite Pauline Hanson’s “foreign owned” slur, it would be interesting to know what would be her reaction had one of Rupert Murdoch’s publications done the same exercise as Al Jazeera.

Mark Hipgrave writes: Earlier in the week, Morrison was telling us that preferences were decided by the party branches, yet now he has taken control and announced that he has decided that PHON was going behind Labor. Imagine the News Corp bleating if Shorten trotted out Keating every second day for an endorsement. Why can’t Morrison let Howard enjoy his retirement?

On Linc Energy

Barry Welch writes: There seems to be some sort of pattern in big LNP donors going bust and leaving taxpayers a mess to clean up. Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel donated $500,000 to the LNP in 2010 then went bust. Linc Energy donated $300,000 to the LNP and went bust. The key to being a successful business — don’t donate to the LNP!

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