The prime ministerial beer and baby controversy - fake news at its finest

On Monday morning, the post had been "liked" by 17,000 Facebook users, and 1500 people had commented on it. Because I value my mental health I did not read all the comments, however I couldn't find a single one that wasn't sticking up for the Prime Minister in the face of the moral outrage he provoked, even though that moral outrage was not in evidence anywhere except in two comments quoted in the tabloid media and now, presumably, buried under an avalanche of nice comments.

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/the-prime-ministerial-beer-and-baby-controversy--fake-news-at-its-finest-20170911-gyesxc.html

The Empirical Strikes Back: Malcolm Roberts' difficult day in court

When Pauline Hanson returned to Canberra last year after nearly two decades in the political wilderness the conventional wisdom was that she was older and wiser, more "sophisticated".

She had learned from the mistakes of the 1990s, when the party fell apart as a result of infighting and incompetence.

Citizenship, for example. In 1999 the party lost a senator, Heather Hill, when it was revealed she was a dual citizen of Australia and Britain. The new and improved One Nation would never be so careless.

When questions were raised about Malcolm Roberts' citizenship in July this year, that was the party's message in a nutshell. As Hanson's chief of staff James Ashby told Fairfax
Media at the time: "We learnt from the Heather Hill case so weren't going to fall for that a second time."

Hanson told her 200,000 Facebook followers "hand on heart" Roberts was in the clear and it was all just a media witch hunt.

She's either wrong or a fool.

Here are the "empirical" facts: Roberts was a citizen of Britain for the first five months of his Senate tenure. Roberts may still be "choosing to believe" otherwise but not even his lawyer disputes this.

He did not go through the formal renunciation process until months after he took up his seat. So his case - if you can call it that - rested entirely on the notion that by sending a couple of emails to British authorities before the election he had taken "reasonable steps" to renounce his allegiance.

It was always flimsy and just minutes into Thursday's court appearance it fell to pieces: the man who claims he knows better than the world's scientists on climate change had sent his missives to non-existent email addresses.

It is now virtually unthinkable the court will allow Senator Roberts to remain Senator Roberts.

One Nation is not sophisticated, it's gobsmackingly sloppy. As Roberts told the court: "No one did any vetting that I'm aware of with me."

The party that claims it learned the lessons of the 1990s didn't even bother to screen its overseas-born candidate.

One Nation is not alone: the Greens and Nationals also stuffed up their vetting procedures in spectacularly embarrassing fashion. But when they realised their errors they came clean and took responsibility.

Senator Roberts did not. He changed his story half a dozen times in a desperate attempt to save his political skin.

And even now he is pleading ignorance, making the unfathomably absurd claim that Thursday was the first time he'd had it confirmed he was indeed once British. This is a guy born to a Welsh father, registered at birth as a British citizen, who referred to himself as a British citizen when he applied to become an Australian at age 19, who wrote a letter last year asking if he was "still" a British citizen, and who successfully – albeit belatedly – renounced his British citizenship last year.

But this was somehow the first he'd really heard about it.

When it comes to One Nation, ignorance is indeed in plentiful supply; but it's no defence in a court of law.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/the-empirical-strikes-back-malcolm-roberts-difficult-day-in-court-20170921-gylw51