When Feldman announced last December that One Nation members
were deserting Pauline Hanson,
photographs appeared
on the Internet of Feldman with fellow MP Jack Paff, Scott Balson
(One Nation webmaster), Max Aleckson (Australia First) and Tony Pitt.
Comment: Tony Koch's fawning to the Labor Party is legend.
In the article below he tries to ridicule the newly formed City Country Alliance.
Tony Koch, Chief Reporter
The Courier-Mail February 19th, 2000
Queensland has had more than its share of oddball politicians and would-be MPs. Most people thought this nonsense had reached its height with the advent and inevitable decline of One Nation.
But that organisation's brief success appears to have merely acted as the encouragement needed to bring into the open all those with strange ideas, philosophies or phobias, and give them a common umbrella.
That umbrella is expected to throw its protective shade at a meeting in Mareeba next weekend to sort out the latest version of One Nation/Country Party/City Country Alliance.
The parliamentary leader of the now defunct One Nation party, Bill Feldman, gave the first hint on ABC Radio on February 10 when he was asked about the merger forming the Alliance.
Others would be involved "There's moves towards us from Australia Reform, the remnants of Australia First. It's sort of like a gathering of the clans, basically."
One Nation breakaway Geoff Knuth said "There's definitely a need to bring into line all the minor parties, independents, whoever. All the disenchantment out there has to be brought together under one banner... Reform Party, Australia Alliance and Australia United,,, there's very few policies that differ between the lot of us."
That's where it becomes scary. The "minor parties" include refuges for some characters with ideas, that in many cases, are abhorrent to thinking people.
When Feldman announced last December that One Nation members
were deserting Pauline Hanson,
photographs appeared
on the Internet of Feldman with fellow MP Jack Paff, Scott Balson
(One Nation webmaster), Max Aleckson (Australia First) and Tony Pitt.
Pitt is a former One Nation office holder and editor of right wing publications that promote the most incredible way-out conspiracy theories (eg that the Port Arthur massacre was a set-up).
In 1997 Pitt was mentioned in Federal Parliament by National Party Senator Ron Boswell, who said Pitt used to produce his own newspaper called Flight "which housed a variety of extremists including the League of Rights and Peter Sawyer. Pitt used to be the Press Secretary for the Confederate Action Party which disintegrated following claims of fraud, unethical conduct and unaccounted finances. Does the same fate await One Nation?
Pitt was also press secretary to the extremist gun lobby group, the Firearm Owners Association, serving alongside Ron Owen, the publisher of yet another extremist rag, Lock, Stock and Barrel.
This magazine promoted the racist AWB or Afrikaner Resistance Movement in South Africa to its readers. AWB's leader has just been sentenced to jail for the attempted murder of one of his black workers and assault on another.
On his web page, Balson refers to Jeremy Lee, the former national organiser of the League of Rights. Balson says Lee is a regular columnist and opinion writer. Also referred to is Bob Djurdjevic, who, we are told, is to deliver a lecture in Sydney on "The New World Order and Serbia". Djurdjevic is into conspiracies involving the illuminati, the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers.
Also involved with Balson/One Nation et al is Len Clampett who leads the Reclaim Australia Party, which promotes as a policy what it calls a citizen-initiated mandate.
Clampett has circulated a letter he wrote to Prime Minister John Howard, and notice of a meeting he is calling for Brisbane next month when he will explain how he will destroy the goods and service tax.
It is as well that you are informed early of this, because Clampett points out there is room for only 800 people at his meeting - at a cost of $10 each.
Clampett has apparently discovered the little-known legal fact that he can get people to sign a petition and demand that Queensland Governor Peter Arnison direct State Parliament not to co-operate with the Federal Government on GST issues.
Clampett expects the governor to tell Parliament "I am mandating you to instruct the Queensland Parliament as a whole to, within one month of your receipt of this order:
Legislate immediately to ensure that the State take no part in the collection of the GST and to ensure that no taxes affecting Queensland are implemented without the approval of the people of Queensland given as the result of a binding referendum".
Governor Arnison will have to call in a bevy of constitutional experts to advise him what to do with that. I am sure.
So Feldman, Knuth and co sally forth tomorrow to embrace the splinter groups of dissidents to become the City Country Alliance.
What a sad state of affairs that will be. But perhaps it will be a blessing to have all the scorpions under one rock.
As a very famous former Queensland Premier was wont to say: "If you lie down with the dogs, you are sure to straddle the barbed wire fence and end up walking on your own shallots." Or something like that. All this conspiracy stuff makes my head spin.