So, yesterday Al Jazzera announced that the NRA met with representatives of Pauline Hanson’s odious One Nation Party and there were discussions about funding and how that might result in tougher Australian gun laws and less pressure on the Americans to change their gun laws to slow down the rate of mass shootings.
Here is the first tweet. Read the whole thread for the details.
Pretty incendiary allegation eh. The NRA was prepared to fund a small racist party in Australia because it could then gain the balance of power in the senate and force the dilution of Australia’s reasonably tough gun laws.
How do you think that One Nation handled the allegations?
There were two defences.
First of all they acted all tough on it and referred Al-Jazeera to ASIO (same thing as the SIS). Obviously this was a completely untrue allegation made to improperly affect Australia’s political system.
Then it changed rather dramatically. It was all the fault of the demon drink.
Here is the detail as described by Michael McGowan in the Guardian:
Senior One Nation figures James Ashby and Steve Dickson claim they had been “on the sauce” drinking scotch for “three or four hours” when discussing seeking a $20m donation from the National Rifle Association to the far-right Australian party.
Ashby and Dickson faced the media on Tuesday after an al-Jazeera investigation revealed the two men had sought millions in donations from the NRA during a trip to the US last year, in a bid to seize the balance of power and weaken Australia’s gun laws.
Dickson said the party’s leader, Pauline Hanson, was “quite ill” and unable to appear publicly.
Instead, Dickson and Ashby faced questions about their interactions with a journalist, Rodger Muller, who used a hidden camera and posed as a grassroots gun campaigner to expose the party’s extraordinary efforts to secure funding in Washington DC in September.
Dickson was at times impassioned in defence of their actions, and at others appeared flustered. He apologised several times for sweating and, unsolicited, talked about visiting strip clubs in his youth.
“This … may be the last thing I ever say in politics, I don’t know yet. I don’t know if I want to keep doing this because I couldn’t believe that a person like me could be sucked in to the extent that I’ve been sucked in,” Dickson said.
“This is the stuff you see in James Bond magazines. I would never expect you would see this for real in the real world.”
The article confirms that they did meet with the NRA and had an arranged meeting with the Koch Brothers.
So if I understand the situation correctly they were not seeking between $10 and $20 million from ultra right wing US sources. They just talked about it and travelled to the US of A to have casual conversations with representatives of the NRA and the Koch Brothers.
Sounds legitimate.
The big worry is what is the NRA and associated right wing groupings planning for New Zealand? A lot of the push back on our desire to change our laws to outlaw military style semi automatic weapons is coming from the land of the free and the home of the brave.
I hope the SIS is investigating possible US sourced interference in our political system.
Vigorously.
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