Pauline Hanson cops it every time she talks about a monoculture. People act like she’s calling for some pure English enclave. She’s not. Look at the Blue Heeler. The Halls family in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales started with Scottish Highland collies and Northumberland drovers dogs, then crossed them with the Australian dingo for toughness and heat tolerance. Thomas Simpson Hall bred them at Dartbrook station near Aberdeen. When the Halls properties were sold, the original line scattered. Later breeders brought in other bloodlines, including bully and pit bull types, to make the dog stockier and stronger for heavy cattle work. Different bloodlines from different places. Not one pure strain. They weren’t kept separate so every origin could stay pure. They were selected hard under Australian conditions, heat, distance, wild cattle, hard work. The ones that couldn’t handle it were culled. The ones that could were kept. What came out the other end wasn’t a mongrel mess. It was a tough, silent, loyal working dog that belonged to this country. An Australian type. That’s the point. Real Australians are no different. Whether your people came from Britain, Ireland, Europe or somewhere else, the ones who stayed and built this place adapted to it. They took on the habits, the language, the expectations, the loyalty. They didn’t demand the country reshape itself around every difference they brought. A shared culture isn’t hatred of outsiders. It’s the thing that turns outsiders into us. Without it you don’t get a people. You just get groups living side by side, keeping score, waiting for the next argument. The Blue Heeler didn’t stay half Scottish and half dingo forever. It became something new that could do the job here. Same with a country.

There was a town that worked. People owned their shops. They decided their own hours. If a man built something useful, he kept what he earned. If he failed, he carried it. Neighbours helped each other because they chose to, not because they were ordered to. The place wasn’t perfect, but it was alive. Then the talk started. “We need to think of the whole, not just ourselves.” “No one should fall behind.” “The town’s success belongs to everyone.” It sounded decent at first. A few rules were changed “for the good of the community.” Decisions that used to belong to individuals slowly moved to committees. What you could open, what you could sell, how much you could keep. These things became group matters. The man who worked longer hours was told he made others look bad. The woman who saved carefully was told she was hoarding. The ones who complained were reminded that the town came first. Soon the committees needed more power to make the new system work. People who questioned the direction were no longer just disagreeing, they were putting themselves above the town. That made them difficult. Then it made them dangerous. Shops started closing. Shelves thinned. People stopped taking risks because the rewards no longer belonged to them. When things went wrong, no one was responsible. The problem was always someone else’s lack of commitment, or the old ways, or outsiders. Families grew quieter. Churches emptied a little. Local clubs faded. Loyalty to anything smaller than the whole was treated with suspicion. One evening an old man sat on his porch and said quietly to his neighbour, “We used to be people who lived in a town. Now we’re just parts of the town.” The neighbour didn’t answer. He just looked down the street at the empty shops and the notices on the walls, all of them written in the same careful language about unity and the greater good. The town still existed. It just no longer belonged to the people in it. Perils of Collectivism. Not anti-community. Anti-committee and over governance. @PaulineHansonOz @OneNationAus @JohnRuddick2 @RennickGBR

Today’s interaction with Rennick was the same old pattern. He called me a sellout for pointing out the obvioushe lost his seat, People First got under 1%, and he’s sitting on the sidelines sniping at the only party on the right actually polling in the 20s with seats. That just helps Labor. He rolled out the usual list , ABA hires, Rinehart, a policy shift, party structure. Fair points can be made. Constant public attacks from someone with nothing to show just divide the right while Albo sits pretty. One Nation’s not perfect. Pauline’s not a technocrat and the party’s still built around her however she’s kept the issues on the table for decades and has real numbers now. Most protest parties disappear. This one hasn’t. Focus on the real problem or stay irrelevant. Was my message to him. The comments under his posts show plenty of his own former supporters are saying the same thing. Yet he attacks the messengers also. @PaulineHansonOz @RennickGBR