One Nation - or should that be Two Nations?

Here's some humour for you. If you don't know anything about Australia's politics, One Nation is a simple-solutions far right wing party, which was until this year headed by a former fish-and-chip shop lady, Pauline Hanson. Anywhere that they have actually ended up with seats in parliament though, they're about as successful as a dead fish because of bitter infighting.

One Nation row in court
By Steve Pennells and David Darragh
The West Australian, 13/11/02, page 34

The battle for control of One Nation WA will shift to the Supreme Court as the patry's disputed State president fights to keep hold of the position.

Ron McLean lodged a writ on Monday in a bid to stop party members meeting this month to elect a new State executive. The action comes after a One Nation split that has seen both camps deny the other's authority to represent the party.

One group controls One Nation's bank accounts and post office box.
The other, led by Mr McLean, controls the telephone lines.

IN the writ, Mr McLean claims his election in July, and that of the rest of the executive, was legitimate and should be held valid. A meeting by what he called breakaway members on October 12 to overturn their appointment was not legitimate, he claims.

He seeks the return of the party's electoral file, stationery, petty cash and other documents allegedly taken from One Nation's Victoria Park office last month and wants to regain access to mail and bank accounts.

In a separate action, a One Nation member seeking restraining orders against the party's two MLCs [Members of the Legislative Council] and another party member appeared in Midland Magistrate's Court. Marye Daniels, 57, who claims to be the party's State secretary, wants orders against MLCs Frank Hough and John Fischer and member John Mania. She appeared yesterday over her bid for an order against Mr Fischer.

Ms Daniels claims the men have threatened her. The men say Ms Daniels lost her post at the October meeting and is trying to discredit them. The three applicatiosn have been set down for a hearing on December 10.

The MLCs are recognised by Parliament as One Nation MPs despite an opposing faction's claim that they have been expelled from the party.

Quick rant about tourism

The tourist operators in other states complain about the lack of tourists coming their way, and in particular the lack of repeat tourists. There are repeated campaigns to get them not to stay at home, but they do. I wonder why?

As one of the determined few who goes to the non-mainstream sorta places like SA, Tas and ACT, I've found out the tourism infrastructure (with the exception of SA, which has an excellent infrastructure) just doesn't exist. You have to deal with public utilities which are downright rude to you, you can't get to anywhere nice without paying a packet unless you have a hire car, and nothing seems coordinated. In fact it's the picture of chaos! You go to tourist agencies and they try to sell you their particular tour, which of course only goes to the places they want to go to and is a whistlestop tour, only long enough to take a quick photo. Or, like Canberra, nestled right next to the Snowy Mountains, there are *no* organised tours from Canberra to the Snowy Mountains - you have to get a regular coach to somewhere else and then do it from there. The tour I'm going on around Tasmania is probably the best, and is very well run, but once you're off the tour you're once again at the mercies of the local conditions. I was trying to get to Longford and Perth (about 18km out of Launceston) but have now given up on that as an impossible prospect given the times I am there - which is silly considering I could drive there in under quarter of an hour if I had a car. So basically, self-paced tours are impossible, unlike in WA, NSW or VIC in particular where I've pretty much gone anywhere I've wanted to go within 100-200km of where I am.

In Canberra, the cafe district seems to practically shut down at 6pm in the city, and if you're lucky, after walking around for ages, you might stumble on Happy's Chinese Restaurant, which is hopelessly overcrowded (although nice decor), but actually has really good food (once they serve you). Canberra Airport services do not run on weekends and the public transport system (which is ridiculously expensive for a city of Canberra's size - roughly $10 a day on weekdays and $6 on weekends) does not extend to anywhere near there. Apart from the parliament houses they don't go to any of the tourist sites (telstra tower, space research centre, etc) - you have to get a horribly overpriced taxi to it, which may or may not come, depending on whether the taxi service operator feels helpful or not. This was particularly a problem when I nearly missed a plane and the taxi operator just wanted to sit there and argue over which suburb I was actually in. Just imagine if I was a tourist from England or somewhere.

Oh, well. Their loss.