One Nation spokesperson James Ashby has given a bizarre take on the outcome of the Queensland election claiming the end result will be rising vegetable prices and fishermen in Queensland being “raped and pillaged”.
Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor government was returned for a third term and look set to govern as a majority, defying election pundit’s expectations and predictions.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party saw their vote across the state collapse, but when Hanson’s senior advisor appeared on the ABC late on Saturday night he brushed off suggestions the party had not performed well.
Speaking to the ABC Ashby listed multiple reasons why people had not voted for the party, suggesting the media had failed to adequately cover areas outside of Brisbane.
“I actually think we’ve has a net-zero gain” Ashby said of the result, saying the party’s main goal was to have Stephen Andrew re-elected to the seat of Mirani. Ashby said he didn’t accept the outcome of the result was known because a large number of postal votes had yet to be counted and added into the results.
“Labor played the fear game and it always works, and what we’ve seen tonight, I’m shocked by some of the results that Labor’s got. It appears on the surface that we’ve taken a bit of a hair cut in our votes, but I just think that fear got the better of people and they played that card right up until the very end.” Ashby said.
Nominating fear of a further Covid-19 breakout as the reason why so many people voted for the Labor party, Ashby also said a poor campaign from the Liberal National party, and a lack of diversity in the media had been significant factors of influence in the election outcome.
“The Liberal National Party certainly didn’t put forward a very good alternative government in this state. I think also that something that also needs to be identified here, we have lost in every single regional market across this state – media. And I can’t tell you how many local media have just evaporated from these markets. Rockhampton, Gladstone, McKay – they’ve all lost their newspapers, so people – they only news they’ve had is from Brisbane and that has just been one massive fear campaign.
“What we need to see is newspapers back in these regions. I can tell you right now without the newspapers these local markets have had nothing to go by apart from Brisbane news.”
Ashby said the ABC had shown that they didn’t have sufficient resources in regional areas.
“The ABC whinges [sic] all the times that it doesn’t have enough funding to go and do crosses from regional parts of this state, you’ve got all the money down there in the south-east corner, and it’s the same with all the commercial networks, they haven’t got the resources. So I think that’s part of the problem.
“You’ve had no cameramen, there’s no snappers out there for newspapers, you’ve had bugger all journalists, they don’t even have offices any more, you’ve got journalists working from their dingy little corner cupboard in their house, that’s what we’re dealing with in regional Queensland. And you guys down there, you suck it all up, the ABC’s pretty fat in Brisbane.”
When the ABC host pointed out the broadcaster had exactly the same level of resources deployed as at the last election, Ashby was undeterred.
“The bush is missing out, and I’ll tell you what – under this Palaszczuk government they’re going to miss out even worse, and it’ll be the farmers who will suffer, and it will be you down in the south east corner who will suffer the most because you’re fruit and vegetable prices will go through the roof, we will be stung significantly, the fishermen out there will be absolutely raped and pillaged, and I tell you what, it’ll be Labor’s fault. You watch it’s coming, and we’ve got four years to suffer this.” Ashby declared.
OIP Staff
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