http://www.smh.com.au/news/9811/27/text/features4.html The Sydney Morning Herald 27 Nov 1998 FEDERAL POLITICS Hanson's house divided Date: 27/11/98 With sliding electoral fortunes and growing internal dissent, the One Nation party is in trouble - and it's showing, writes GREG ROBERTS. ONE Nation made a strategic decision earlier this year to lay off the controversial issues which had been its hallmark - attacking Aboriginal welfare funding and Asian immigration. With an eye to the then forthcoming Queensland and Federal elections, the party wanted to appeal to the middle ground by presenting a more moderate face. But One Nation played the race card again this week, with gusto, when chief strategist David Oldfield claimed Aborigines had been "eating each other for 40,000 years", and suggested Chinese Australians should "go back" to China if they wanted to fund a High Court challenge seeking to depose One Nation's senator-elect, Heather Hill. Under attack from all sides and from within, One Nation is keen to attract the sort of publicity it thinks might stem its sliding electoral fortunes. In the supplementary election for the Federal seat of Newcastle last weekend, One Nation's primary vote was 16.5 per cent. In the October election, the party polled 12 per cent in neighbouring Charlton, a similar seat demographically. The absence of a Coalition candidate in Newcastle, however, puts the vote in perspective. If its Federal election vote had held up in the supplementary poll, One Nation should have scored much higher than 16.5 per cent. The party failed to attract the vast majority of Liberal voters who effectively had nowhere else to go. Pauline Hanson was wrong when she predicted before Newcastle that "we're going to do really well here". The result confirmed poll trends showing One Nation's vote has been in decline since its impressive showing in Queensland's June election. The trend has accelerated since Hanson failed in her bid to win the seat of Blair. In blue-collar urban areas such as Newcastle, traditional Labor voters who flirted with One Nation are returning to the fold. Analysis of polling booths in Blair shows Hanson did well in small country towns, but her vote in the outer suburbs of Ipswich had dropped sharply from her 1996 election showing in what was then the seat of Oxley. Many One Nation candidates and members are now criticising their party's direction and leadership. Deeply disillusioned, they believed Hanson's foolish pre-election prediction that One Nation would win a swag of seats. Hill, the only successful candidate, could be ousted by a court challenge because she failed to renounce her British citizenship when nominating as a candidate for her anti-immigration party. One Nation has faced internal dissent before, but the storm clouds gathering this time are more formidable. At a special Queensland party conference in Rockhampton over the weekend, Hanson will face demands from several branches and candidates to sack Oldfield and national director David Ettridge. Alternatively, she will be told, they should be subject to an annual membership ballot to elect a national council. Hanson and the "two Davids" are resisting moves to loosen their stranglehold on the party. "All the accusations and much of what's being suggested are baseless," Oldfield says. The party's Queensland leader, Bill Feldman, dismisses the reformers as "a couple of disgruntled people". What makes the job of containing the clamour tricky is Hanson's absence from Parliament. "As far as we are concerned, Pauline is now just another failed candidate like the rest of us," says one Federal candidate, until recently a close confidant of Hanson. Some members mutter about moving against Hanson if she does not accede to reform demands, oblivious to the fact One Nation has no future without her. The reformers have held a series of meetings nationwide in recent weeks, mostly in regional Queensland and NSW. Another will be held on the Gold Coast on Monday. Oldfield fronted one such meeting, in Dubbo, earlier this month. He warned restless members of dire consequences if the party splits. Members of former Federal MP Graeme Campbell's Australia First party have been making appearances at some meetings, attracted like wolves to the scent of a wounded lamb. At least four proposed constitutions are circulating among the membership. All would establish an elected council to replace Pauline Hanson's One Nation Ltd, the party's legal entity directed by Hanson, Oldfield and Ettridge. The removal of the trio's power summarily to expel members they term "white-ants" is one of the reformers' central demands. Dozens of troublesome members have been kicked out, and now a fresh round of expulsions has begun. Among the newly vanquished are Paul Trewartha, the party's founding vice-president and a key leader of the reform push, and Tony Pitt, the publisher of the right-wing National Interest News. Its current edition features a front-page story, "Is Pauline Hanson's One Nation dying from self-inflicted wounds?" Others - including Tom King, One Nation's Queensland president, and the presidents of as many as 30 branches - may prove harder to dislodge. The expulsion policy has been effective, if ruthless, but the point may have been reached where the three directors have overstepped the mark. Hanson, now the party's full-time president, is oblivious to the mayhem, believing the message from a small band of lieutenants that there is nothing to worry about. Yet One Nation's national campaign and Queensland director, Peter James - its senior organisational figure after Hanson, Oldfield and Ettridge - resigned this week, refusing to give reasons. His departure followed the dramatic resignation of Charles Rappolt, one of the 11 One Nation MPs elected in June, who ended up under psychiatric care after trying to commit suicide. The hearings of two Queensland Supreme Court cases challenging One Nation's registration resume soon. If successful, the consequences for the party would be devastating. One Nation's next test of strength is the December 5 by-election for Mulgrave, Rappolt's Cairns-based former seat. The National Party, which helped elect several One Nation MPs with preferences in June, is not directing preferences to the party this time. Polls suggest One Nation's vote in Mulgrave has slumped. Further bouts of Aborigine-bashing should surprise nobody. 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