Following the WA election fiasco, angry candidates speak out about the chaos, bullying and scamming going on in the One Nation "team". Sydney bureau chief Ross Jones reports.

THE FALLOUT from the PHON’s WA election debacle will haunt the party’s Queensland campaign, as its so-called candidates increasingly realise just what their WA colleagues went through.

Many are going to have second thoughts about being self-funded lambs to the slaughter.

Email traffic between the WA losing candidates and the Queensland hopeful candidates has been flying thick and fast. Some of it has leaked out.

Here are a few samples of what the banana-benders have been reading recently.

(A word of warning – there is some seriously fruity language to follow, so if you are sensitive stop now.)

Two days after the election, on Monday 13 March, James Ashby appointee Aidan Nagle, AKA 'Western Australian Candidates Liaison' AKA 'National Head Office National Memberships Manager', sent an email to all of PHON’s losing candidates.

It starts off jauntily enough with ‘Hi Team’, but soon gets to the point:

'I’d like to remind everyone about James’ message to everyone in our last teleconference. All of you have been running on pure adrenaline for this campaign and regardless of your or other's results, it is simply now over.'

So that’s it?

Not quite.

@randlight WA One Nation Candidates Disendorsed By Party For Failing To Reach Standards 25 Feb - 2017 pic.twitter.com/jqpvwt1PMu — Sir Clyde Of Nob (@nobby15) February 25, 2017

On 17 March, disendorsed candidate Dane Sorenson, a man who calls a spade a fucking shovel, sent his own missive to "the team". He titled it ‘a look back’.

Dane summed things up, addressing Aidan Nagle in particular,

We, the shabby remnants of a shambolic and stupidly conducted amateur attempt of a campaign, run by self proclaimed experts and one child protege who was promoted as a stellar tech wiz kid who both Labor AND Liberal would have given undisclosed riches, if only they could have him on THEIR team, well - we would, in retrospect, happily have seen all of the Eastern States “support” team campaign for either of the major parties. Actually, they might have helped the Liberals - they did marginally better than PHON …… just. Pauline, ever the delusional leader she is, went from condemning all and sundry for a disastrous result and appointing blame in a scatter gun way to claiming two MLC’s as an earth shattering success. Well, for one of them it WAS an earth shattering success - the duplicity and underhandedness involved in securing his seat is breathtaking if for nothing else then for it’s total disregard for EVERY other member of the party. You can not even say you were unaware or even that no one warned you, but very few of you even comprehended the breath of the deceit and self interest involved.

Dane then describes the upshot of PHON’s farcical preference deal with the Libs, before going on to say,

What I would like to see us all take away from this is the utter conviction that we were absolutely duped and used - certainly by one James Ashby but sadly, it appears, also by the lady herself. This is the person who demanded that it is “My party and you’ll do as I say” - as such, the owner of the party must take responsibility for what she allowed and/or directed to happen.

@SkyNewsAust And the person along with Hanson behind this descrimination, Yep a regular in the courts system, Lovely blok NOT James Ashby, pic.twitter.com/o0mTMrErti — Newcastle Guardian (@NewcastleGardia) March 8, 2017

James was not happy:

Wow, you’ve surprised me with such eloquent words Dane, unlike the multiple foul mouthed calls, where words like ‘cunt and fuck’ spewed from your vile mouth. Don’t ever contact me again you self righteous, deranged man. James Ashby

Aidan chipped in:

I concur It really is a piece that you should be submitting for consideration to get published. You are quite coherent when every second word is not, "fucking shit cunt officers", "fuckstain higher ups", or "cunting niggers" as you have said before verbally to many members of PHON staff. Good luck with your future endeavours but as a disendorsed candidate any input into PHON operations is not appreciated nor requested.

Dane shot back:

Hello Aidan, Well, you seem to have a limited sense of reality my boy. I’d take this opportunity to point out you are yet again lying - I did not verbally abuse “many” members of PHON - just yourself and James - and to portray otherwise is dishonest. I was not aware Pauline was on the phone when James called and never intended to use that language in front of her - James rang, did not disclose Pauline was on the line, so the responsibility for her being exposed to my tirade is squarely with him. To be fair, Pauline should have declared herself. If you’d like to discus matters further - I’m actually in Brisbane for a few days and would love to opportunity to have a meaningful face to face with both yourself and James. My Best Regards Dane Sorensen

Meaningful.

Disendorsed One Nation candidates Sandy Baraiolo and Dane Sorensen go nuclear on James Ashby: https://t.co/lpmCJGgSsu pic.twitter.com/T4EmNQtkJI — Crikey.com.au (@crikey_news) March 20, 2017

A couple of days later, on 19 March, disendorsed candidate Sandy Baraiolo wrote to her would-be colleagues:

The election is over, my positive thoughts have been with you all, sadly we were never given any clear written directions nor any real help from PHON. It’s my personal belief candidates were placed in as many seats as possible for monetary gain for the party only. What the party did to Brain Brightman was abhorrent it’s my belief they had no intention to run him as a candidate just use him for political gain. It now appears PHON were only concerned with Upper house seats and then a certain candidate was given preferential treatment over and above everyone else, favoritism and nepotism, how are you today Colin? How was this fair to all candidates who have spent money when the real prospect of them winning was very poor? Please know I am a phone call away if you need to chat.

Sandy then addressed James directly:

You James should be ashamed, you're nothing more than a bully and this is not a good trait in a person you spew vitriol at any one who cares to stand up to you. I have been on the end of your tirade a few times. Just remember many a person has been taken down by the written word, I did absolutely nothing wrong and you became a monster to me.

Then it was Aidan’s turn:

I must say I am absolutely disgusted and offended by your comments Aidan they are quite offensive in the least. If you were my 19-year-old son I would be having a few words to you, you don’t belittle or malign people for your own personal gain, you're moving along the same track as James and do you really want to emulate his behaviour? By what you did to me I guess you are.

Sandy is not going along with the sucker game either:

I will submit my electoral claim and will watch with interest if it gets paid back to me I am telling you now I will fight you for my return. The party paid ZERO DOLLARS on me. Pauline Hanson’s One nation party disendorsed me on the 22nd February 2017 and therefore should not be entitled to any of my monetary return.

Margaret Dodd was PHON’s candidate for Scarborough until election-eve. Then she quit.

On 22 March, she wrote to former PHON candidates:

Really this has been such a disgrace, Sandy is a straight up person and so is Dane. Anthony Fells and Ron McLean are the people who invited me to join PHON, I found both really decent human beings and a lot more helpful than the hierarchy of the party which after all was a revenue raising exercise in my opinion. I met Mayre and Ron, two of the most genuine people one could ever have the privilege of knowing. Anthony Fells went all out to help me with my campaign, printing and putting banners up, truly a heart of gold. Sandy whom I have not met yet but had a long conversation with, is straight up and honest as is Dane. Dane may have used colorful language, but so do a lot of people when frustrated and if Pauline was offended I suggest she stops listening at keyholes. The truth is Dane was disendorsed because he had printed his own HTV cards. When the QLD hierarchy had gone back on their word of not doing preference deals and preferences were to be a seat by seat basis, and how long was one supposed to wait to receive printed materials so they could start their campaign. Now Senator Hanson has seen the mistake she has made in WA and is blaming in on the Liberals specifically on Mr Barnett being on the nose. The truth of the matter is that PHON lacked integrity, honesty and transparency and the people of WA seen this for what it was.. 'A Liberal puppet".

"Margaret Dodd quits One Nation after four weeks"https://t.co/rDN3Ax5oes



Not even one party — Simon Banks (@SimonBanksHB) March 10, 2017

Ms Dodd took aim at PHON's apparent surrender of its principles:

Phon is supposed to be for the battlers, yet The PHON Senators crossed the floor supporting a cut in penalty rates, these people are low paid often casual or permanent partime, who often need more than one job to provide for themselves, very few are full time workers with all the benefits that come with a steady full time Job. What is Phon doing about the 457 visa, overseas workers taking preference over Australian workers, this is not good for the economy as these workers send the largest part of their wage back to their country for their families. What has been done about the sell of our farmlands and pastoral leases to foreign ownership, our food. What about our assets docks energy etc all sold of to foreign ownership, our infrastructure. What about our natural resources, our mines. What is Phon doing about this globalisation which results in the filthy Rich getting richer and creating slavery as a workforce, Our people. What about the homeless, the unemployed, affordability of education. affordability of medical attention, affordability of power, gas and water. Sorry Phon did something about that, they voted with the liberals to cut money from the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, so much for fighting for the battlers. Phon do listen to the people as do all the other parties, in one ear out the other.

Finally, Ms Dodd expressed many people's disappointment with this so-called party of protest:

So disappointed in Phon, I thought this party was different than the others, I was wrong. Seems the only Phon agenda is anti-Islam, Australia's problems are all due to this 2.2 million* minority of people. Last but not least, WA had some wonderful people as candidates wanting to make change, but sadly all was taken for a ride. I am so sorry and send you all my best regards.

So, let’s say you are a Queensland PHON candidate — are you feeling lucky? Well, are you?

* Editor's note: There are, in fact, only around 500,000 Muslims in Australia.

Ross Jones is the author of 'Ashbygate: The Plot to Destroy Australia's Speaker'.

You can follow Ross Jones on Twitter @RPZJones.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

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Great to see @independentaus through @rpzjones spot on in predicting the dismal result of One Nation. https://t.co/Hu51rMZYX3 — Dave Donovan (@davrosz) March 11, 2017

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