It’s not quite true to say the Coalition implosion that occurred this week was entirely due to the meteoric rise of One Nation, but the far-right minor party can probably take credit for around 90 per cent of it.
The other 10 per cent is down to genuine concern among some figures in the Nationals, particularly Senator Matt Canavan, that the new hate crime legislation that passed Parliament in a rushed sitting on Tuesday night is massive overreach that will curtail free speech, freedom of association and could criminalise campaigns to boycott countries like Israel and Russia.
Despite suggestions from the ABC’s chief digital political correspondent Clare Armstrong that these concerns were based on “misinformation”, Australia’s foremost constitutional scholar Anne Twomey has confirmed that the issues flagged by Nationals (as well the Greens, and other politicians and legal experts) are in fact completely valid and criticising Israel could now be a crime.
