𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐈 𝐂𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

I’m often copied into posts or replies urging me to support One Nation, and sometimes met with insults when I don’t. This is simply an explanation of why I cannot.

I respect people’s right to join the party and to vote for its candidates. But I cannot ignore what I see as a repeated pattern of poor judgement and ethical concerns in decisions made under its leadership.

A particularly troubling example involved the hiring of a volunteer who had a prior conviction for serious child sexual offences and was later publicly defended by the party leadership when concerns were raised about the appointment.

This was followed by controversy surrounding the repeated engagement of a senior campaign staffer with a serious history of violent offending, including sexual and domestic violence related offences. Despite widespread public concern and criticism, there were multiple instances where the individual was re engaged in senior roles before ultimately being removed after significant political and media pressure.

Leadership responses to these situations have, at various times, been framed as offering “a second chance”, while concerns raised internally and externally were reportedly dismissed or described as politically motivated attacks rather than matters of standards or judgement.

Recent state and federal elections have also been associated with further vetting controversies, including candidates who reportedly had histories involving intervention orders, restraining order breaches, or other serious legal matters. In some cases, individuals were disendorsed only after such issues became publicly known.

These do not appear to be isolated oversights. Former candidates and insiders have publicly alleged that internal concerns about vetting and candidate suitability were not always acted on appropriately.

I am not suggesting the party leader is personally responsible for every individual’s past actions, nor for every decision made at organisational level. But as leader, there is responsibility for the standards set, the culture reinforced, and the judgement applied in senior appointments and candidate selection.

When leaders lower standards, it is perhaps unsurprising when volunteers or candidates appear to follow suit. Recent public controversies have only reinforced that concern for me, including incidents involving volunteers, public defence of questionable conduct by party representatives, and examples of candidates using language in public commentary that many would consider inappropriate for someone seeking public office.

That is not the level of conduct, professionalism, or judgement I expect from people seeking public office. People are entitled to criticise behaviour they disagree with, but public representatives should be capable of doing so without resorting to personal abuse.

When a party campaigns heavily on law and order, protecting women and children, and being tough on crime, repeated controversies involving staffing and candidate selection connected to serious criminal histories inevitably undermine its credibility. The rhetoric and the actions do not always appear to align.

Leading a protest movement is very different from governing. Government requires disciplined teams, consistent standards, and careful judgement in who is placed in positions of responsibility. In my view, the pattern of controversies reflects a politics of outrage rather than the stability and accountability expected of a governing party.

These repeated staffing and candidate controversies matter because leadership appointments are a direct reflection of judgement. While the party often frames such decisions as redemption or second chances, the issue is whether individuals with serious histories of violence or abuse should be placed into senior campaign or representative political roles, particularly in a party that emphasises law and order and community safety.

That distinction is important.

A leader’s hiring decisions reveal the standards they apply when responsibility and public trust are involved. In my view, these decisions demonstrate poor judgement and undermine confidence in leadership standards.

To me, this goes beyond politics. It speaks to judgement.

Decision making relies on personal standards, evidence, accountability, and risk assessment. In these cases, the willingness to prioritise redemption narratives while dismissing concerns as political attacks raises questions about consistency and safeguards.

That is not leadership I can place confidence in.

If judgement is compromised in high stakes personnel decisions, it raises legitimate questions about the quality of judgement applied elsewhere, in governance, policy, and accountability.

Some people may see these matters differently, particularly if they have never been personally affected by violence or abuse. But for those who have, the impact is not abstract. The seriousness of these issues cannot be set aside while simultaneously claiming to champion victims and community safety.

For these reasons, I cannot support a political party that, in my view, has repeatedly shown poor judgement in dealing with issues involving serious violence, abuse, and community safety.

I respect your right to support One Nation if you choose to do so. I simply ask that my decision not to is respected in return.

Knowledge, Narrative and Responsibility

One of the most significant problems in this country isn’t just political disagreement, it’s a widespread lack of understanding about how government and the public service actually function.

Most people don’t have even a basic grasp of roles and responsibilities: how authority is divided, how decisions are made, and who is accountable for what. The distinction between the ceremonial powers of the Governor-General of Australia, the executive authority of the Prime Minister of Australia, and the operational role of ministers and their departments is routinely blurred or misunderstood. Add to that a lack of awareness about how the public service operates — its continuity across governments, its advisory role, and the fact that departmental leadership is often administrative rather than political — and you end up with a public conversation built on shaky foundations.

There’s also very little appreciation of the history and structure of bureaucratic leadership. Senior public servants aren’t elected officials; they’re appointed for their expertise in governance, economics, law, and administration. Yet they’re frequently judged as if they were politicians, or dismissed outright because they don’t fit some imagined mould of what leadership “should” look like.

Layered over that is political tribalism, which makes the problem worse. People aren’t just uninformed about how the system works, they’re often selectively informed. The same action is condemned or defended depending entirely on who is in power. A decision that would be labelled incompetent, corrupt, or dangerous if made by one side is suddenly justified, excused, or ignored when made by the other. Principles become flexible, standards shift, and consistency disappears.

That double standard erodes any meaningful accountability. It rewards loyalty over scrutiny and encourages people to defend “their side” rather than assess decisions on their merits. And it makes some people afraid to speak up and the challenge for fear of being attacked, vilified and shunned. It fosters manipulative behaviour by skilled politicians who care more about winning than winning the right way. Once that mindset takes hold, facts become secondary to affiliation, and debate turns into a contest of narratives rather than an exchange of ideas.

The consequence is predictable. When people don’t understand how the system works , and filter everything through a partisan lens they misattribute responsibility. Decisions get blamed on the wrong individuals or institutions. Complex policy issues are reduced to slogans. And into that vacuum, misinformation thrives.

Social media accelerates the problem. Claims that align with someone’s political leaning are accepted and shared without scrutiny, while anything that challenges those views is dismissed out of hand. It stops being about facts or governance and becomes about tribe, reinforcing beliefs rather than testing them.

At that point, accountability breaks down. If voters don’t understand who is responsible for what, they can’t properly judge performance. And when standards are applied inconsistently, even clear failures can be waved away while minor issues are amplified into outrage. It becomes less about competence and more about perception.

You don’t need everyone to be a constitutional expert. But a functioning democracy does rely on a baseline level of civic literacy, and a willingness to apply the same standards regardless of who holds power. Without that, the loudest voices, not the most informed, end up shaping the narrative, and that’s a poor foundation for any country trying to govern itself effectively. 

The Conundrum Between Fight or Calm

There’s a popular line doing the rounds at the moment, most recently put by Kos Samaras from RedBridge Group, in a column published in The New Daily that voters across Western democracies are turning away from “managers” and towards “fighters.”

It’s a compelling argument. And to be fair, it captures something real.

When people feel ignored, under pressure, or let down by institutions, they do become more receptive to leaders who are willing to draw lines, name opponents, and prosecute a cause. You can see that energy on both sides of politics. It’s sharper, louder, and far more visible than the quieter business of consensus-building.

But I think that framing misses something important.

What’s actually changed is the environment. Social media rewards outrage. News cycles amplify conflict. Political incentives increasingly favour those who can cut through with force rather than those who can quietly deliver. In that kind of ecosystem, “fighters” don’t just exist, they dominate attention. And attention can easily be mistaken for preference.

You can see this play out in real time on social media every day.

Post something measured, fact-based, and grounded in evidence, even on issues people claim to care deeply about, and the response is often muted. Engagement drops off. The conversation is thinner, slower, and far less visible. It doesn’t travel.

Now post something provocative, emotionally charged, or outright misleading, and the opposite happens. It spreads quickly. It draws reactions, arguments, pile-ons. It creates momentum. Outrage, whether justified or not, has a velocity that facts alone rarely match.

This is where the argument needs more context.

Yes, there is a visible shift towards more combative political styles. Yes, leaders who “fight” and “name enemies” are cutting through more effectively. But part of that shift is being manufactured and amplified by the environment itself.

Algorithms don’t measure considered judgment, they measure engagement. And engagement is disproportionately driven by conflict, identity, and emotion. The more divisive the content, the more it is surfaced, shared, and reinforced. Over time, that creates a feedback loop where the loudest voices appear to represent the dominant view.

Political actors respond rationally to that incentive structure. Media organisations do too. And gradually, the public conversation becomes skewed toward confrontation, not necessarily because it reflects a deep, settled voter preference, but because it performs better in the channels that now shape perception.

That distinction matters.

Because when we look at this through that lens, the idea that voters are “abandoning” consensus politics starts to look less like a clear shift in values and more like a distortion of what we’re able to see and measure.

There is still a large, quieter cohort of voters who value competence, evidence, and the ability to build consensus, but their preferences don’t generate the same immediate reaction, so they don’t get the same visibility. They are present, but underrepresented in the noise.

So while Samaras is right to point out the rise of more combative political behaviour, it’s worth asking how much of that is genuine demand, and how much of it is a system that amplifies conflict and mistakes attention for endorsement.

Because if we confuse the two, we risk overcorrecting, rewarding the loudest voices while overlooking the broader, more durable expectations voters still have when it comes to governing.

And that’s where the real tension sits, between what cuts through, and what actually works.