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The Liberals are now tarnishing One Nation by association

What sort of deal would be considered beyond the pale for One Nation voters? Now we know.

Andrew P Street

Politically Australia is currently in a particularly colourful period, with the adjective being used here in the same context in which a poorly supervised child with paint samples and sippy cup of undiluted red cordial might be considered to take a "colourful" approach to interior design.

What's been especially noteworthy in recent months has been the way that the Coalition generally and the Liberal Party specifically have seemingly decided to messily fall apart in public.

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While Tony Abbott's regular snipes against Malcolm Turnbull have now become pure vaudeville, as was senator Cory Bernardi's decision to take his bat and ball and sulk off to the crossbench, there are more serious signs of structural collapse.

Things like former Nationals chief whip George Christensen slamming his leader Barnaby Joyce in public over whether bigots should have more legal rights, or Defence Materiel Minister Christopher Pyne and Immigration Minister-slash-sentient miasma of doom Peter Dutton openly bickering over whether or not the government's terrorism laws are inadequate.

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And no one in the government seems to be prepared to commit to whether cutting Sunday penalty rates for hospitality and retail workers is a good idea or not, but it's causing all sorts of panic in the backbench where at least four seats could be lost as a result of the decision – and when the sanest, most politically shrewd suggestion is coming from Tasmanian senator and tireless flag scourge Eric Abetz, something is clearly terribly, terribly wrong.

It's widely assumed that Turnbull's leadership will be challenged before the year is out, because our major parties find it easier to fire the captain than steer away from the looming iceberg, and one of the litmus tests for his leadership will be how big a disaster the upcoming WA election is for the Liberals.

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And this doesn't bode well for Malc, because so poisonous has the atmosphere around the government become that it's apparently now tarnishing One Nation by association.

See, the populist party based on alternative facts, night terrors and a seething sense of entitlement were predicted by polls and pundits to pull about 13 per cent of he vote in next week's WA election.

So large a threat did they seem to the Liberal government of Colin Barnett that the WA division of the Liberals made the unprecedented decision to arrange a preference deal with One Nation instead of traditional partners the National Party in the political equivalent of being dumped by text message.

However, according to a Fairfax REACHtel poll, the One Nation vote is currently looking more like 8 per cent. In other words, associating with the Liberal Party has apparently lost One Nation votes.

Just think for a minute what this means. A large number of voters presumably went "look, I was persuaded by the strength of One Nation's arguments about how we're being swamped by Muslims, and how the CSIRO and NASA are secretly inventing climate change, and how single mothers are too ugly and lazy to keep a man, and how The Gays have sinister magic mind control powers – but preferencing the Liberal Party in the WA lower house? Now that, sir, is lunacy!"

And sure, it's not as though both parties haven't been doing all they can to alert WA citizens to the fact that they're perfectly happy to run jerks as candidates, from Liberal candidate and Stolen Generation denier Daniel Parasiliti to One Nation's journalist-murder advocate Richard Eldridge. Truly, both parties should be very satisfied with their track record in attracting the best and brightest to their cause.

But the biggest message this poll result sends is to the Liberals: if you're considered so on the nose that conspiracy theorists and Islamophobes think they look like idiots for associating with you, then the jig may already be up.

Get your tickets now for the Double Disillusionists podcast live at Giant Dwarf on Tuesday 7 March with Dom Knight and Andrew P Street joined by special guests Van Badham (The Guardian) and Michael Hing (Triple J/SBS's The Feed).

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