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The ABC’s reaction to One Nation’s historic Lower House win reveals more about media elites than the voters they’re so eager to diagnose.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has won its first-ever Lower House seat, and the mood over at the ABC is somewhere between the fall of Rome, and an almond milk shortage in inner-city Melbourne.

Here’s ABC journalist Patricia Kavelas worrying on Saturday night that the result might give Australian voters the idea that it’s okay to vote for One Nation:

A big and dangerous mistake to legitimise One Nation and to embolden One Nation.

I used the term earlier on in the broadcast, the permission structure. If they are able to win their first lower house seat, that begins the process of legitimising them, and in other electorates where they may run, voters will be thinking, well it’s happened before… it’s normal now.

You start normalising something.

The horror!

God forbid that voters conclude they don’t require a permission slip from Ultimo before casting a ballot.

Permission Not Granted

One can picture the ABC as a kind of electoral kindergarten teacher, anxiously reminding the children to colour inside the approved ideological lines.

As for the danger of ‘normalising’ things. Just a few weeks ago, the ABC featured on its social media channels the heartwarming story of a man who had come out as a transgendered mermaid.

He tells the ABC:

I started doing parttime mermaiding about 12 months ago. I’ve always loved the water.

The ABC reporter replies enthusiastically:

Did you say your tail was in the trans flag colours?

To which the bloke, whom we are told is a father of two, replies:

It is in the trans flag colours. I am a proud trans woman.

Perhaps if Pauline Hanson had emerged from the Murray River as a proud transgendered mermaid, the public broadcaster would be more sympathetic.

But alas, no. Pauline Hanson is just your regular Aussie who wants cheaper power, lower immigration and fewer ISIS Brides.

Or, as the ABC likes to call her, ‘A bigot.’

The Bigot Consensus

ABC panellist Nikki Savva told Insiders on Sunday morning that if the Liberal Party did a deal with One Nation, it would be,

“ … aligning itself with a party that at its core is racist and bigoted.”

Ahh, the smell of freshly brewed hate speech on a Sunday morning.

There’s a reason Niki Savva is Niki Savva and not Niki Savvy… calling someone a racist and a bigot isn’t the flex it used to be.

And implying that 60 percent of the good folk who make up the electorate of Farrer are – at core – racists and bigots is hardly the way to convince them of the error of their ways.

There was zero pushback from Insiders host David Spiers, or from other panellists.

At the ABC, accusing your fellow citizens of being bigots is not considered editorialising. It’s considered weather.

Fellow Insiders panellist Greg Brown from The Australian said,

The more wins One Nation gets, the more it empowers people in the community to look at One Nation.

Well, we wouldn’t want people in the community being empowered to look at an alternative to the uniparty, would we?

It Must Be the Russians

Peter Hartcher is a regular on the ABC’s Insiders. His column in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald was headed:

Australia tetters on the brink of a populist uprising led by a long-term racist

And former ABC Four Corners Investigative journalist Peter Cronau analysed the Farrer by-election thus …

The fact that such similar far right-wing parties are rising around the Western world at precisely the same time, suggests a level of coordination by foreign hands.

Or… and this is just me spit-balling… it could be that citizens are sick of destructive leftist culture war policies.

I’m joking.

When voters reject elite consensus, the explanation can never be “they’ve had enough”. It must be the Russians.

Or Trump.

And — if you listen to the ABC — what’s the difference?

Priorities

On Saturday night, One Nation unseated the Coalition for the first time in the Farrer electorate’s 80-year history.

The ABC were so interested in the history-making winner that they cut away from him in the middle of his victory speech so they could do more analysis.

But then, just minutes later, they cut away from analysis so viewers could listen to the Teal loser’s speech.

While the ABC weren’t so interested in the new member for Farrer, commentator Patricia Karvelas was keenly interested in what the result meant for the Liberal Party.

Now, remember, the Liberal Party held this seat with 43 percent of the primary vote just 12 months ago. And Saturday night saw their vote collapse faster than ABC radio’s audience, to just 12 percent.

Huge implications for the Liberals, right?

The ABC’s Patricia Karvelas told viewers that the loss meant,

“ … one less woman for the Liberal Party as well who already had diabolically low numbers of women in the parliament.”

Ah yes. The people of Farrer weren’t just racists, they were misogynists as well!

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of David Farley MP/Facebook.