Junk Explained: A Calm Summary Of One Nation’s Batshit Campaign

For everyone playing at home, we’re in the final fortnight of the federal election campaign. Most Australian political parties have spent the last weeks furiously canvassing their electorates while analysing the margins and swings that will decide the political stakes of the next cycle of government.

On the other hand, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party have spent the last fortnight publicly disintegrating.

The first signs of turmoil appeared last week after a One Nation candidate was revealed to have enrolled to run in two completely political parties in separate parts of the country.

Malcolm Heffernan was referred to the Australian Federal Police after the Australian Electoral Commission discovered he was officially enrolled for both One Nation in New South Wales, and The Australian Federation Party in Western Australia. How did this SNAFU occur? Was Heffernan simply trying to hedge his bets (even though, you know, running in two different parties is very illegal)?

The simple reason Heffernan gave reporters was that his former political party, One Nation, had failed to un-enrol him after telling him “his services were no longer required”.

“It’s 100 percent not my fault,” Heffernan told the Guardian. 

Heffernan says that after initially falling out with One Nation, they asked him if he’d like to run in the seat of Banks in New South Wales — despite the fact Heffernan lives in WA.

Although he thought the request was “weird”, he agreed to the deal, only for One Nation to backflip on the offer a few days later. He then angrily left the party and joined the Australian Federation Party as a candidate instead.

Heffernan told the Guardian that he only discovered that One Nation had actually kept him enrolled as a candidate for Banks after receiving an angry letter from the Australian Electoral Commission, who later referred him to the police.

Invisible Candidates

Yesterday, the ABC revealed that what happened to Heffernan wasn’t an isolated incident. Across the country, One Nation candidates are seemingly enrolled in seats that are hundred of kilometres away from where they actually live — with some of the hopefuls themselves being completely unknown by locals.

It’s even hard to find a photo of some of the candidates running for One Nation, with pictures on the party’s how-to-vote cards using the likeness of Senate representative Kate McCulloch even with male candidates.

Whats um… what’s going on here then? pic.twitter.com/4UvgRZgCh6

— Matt Bevan (@MatthewBevan) May 5, 2022

One candidate in particular, Narelle Seymour, who is running in the Sydney seat of Hughes, completely stumped investigators.

Her complete lack of online presence initially led reporters to assume that she didn’t exist, Seymour’s profile on the One Nation’s website doesn’t even include a photo of her. After an intensive investigation, reporters from the ABC tracked down a Narelle Seymour in Wagga Wagga, which is where the candidate is also enrolled, according to the AEC.

A man answering the door told a reporter that “Ms Seymour was unwell” and that “he knew nothing about her being a political candidate”.

The AEC later confirmed that it had finally managed to make contact with Seymour, who is indeed a real-life person running in the seat of Hughes (despite ghosting a candidate forum in the electorate she was running for on Wednesday night).

Dismemberment Threats

While some One Nation candidates are copping criticism for being virtually invisible, one candidate in Victoria attracted too much attention last month after allegedly threatening to dismember two members of the public.

The One Nation candidate for the seat of Melbourne Walter Stragan is under investigation by Victorian police officers after threatening two sisters who removed Stragan’s campaign posters from the front of their shared apartment complex.

In a body corporate meeting that the sisters attended, Stragan allegedly became hostile towards the pair, asking aggressive questions about their race, while making threats of dismemberment, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. 

Stragan allegedly threatened to cut off their fingers, while telling the duo that he had “dismembered people who had crossed him in the past” — supposedly cutting the fingers off a woman who graffitied his apartment, and sending the severed digits to the culprit’s family.

The duo later filed a police report, which Victoria Police are currently investigating. “Northcote police have assisted two women with a civil matter in regard to applying for a personal safety order. The order is currently in place,” a spokesperson said. “Investigators are currently making further enquiries and are yet to establish if a criminal offence has occurred.”

Ghost Candidates Could Be A Strategy For Financial Reimbursement

Although it’s technically not illegal to run for a seat you might not live in (or ever visit), chances are it will make it very difficult to win votes. So why the hell is One Nation putting forward a historically unprecedented amount of ghost candidates this election?

As explained by the AEC to Junkee, candidates who receive at least 4 percent of their vote are eligible to receive reimbursement from their campaign spending, so maybe putting forward a vast swath of candidates on the cheap could see One Nation receive some of its total spendings back.

To be honest, the behaviour of One Nation in the last fortnight feels like something a panicked university student might do in the face of a looming assignment deadline — panic and cram while praying that nobody checks your references.