 |
| Former One Nation national secretary and administration boss Saraya Beric yesterday. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen |
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/one-nation-chaos-website-static-and-staff-quitting/news-story/c68c8617e275b841d59293559130d11f
James Walker
Associate Editor Brisbane
@Jamie_WalkerOz
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has been unable to update the body of its website since October last year when a key figure in the organisation, Saraya Beric, was pushed out, stunning even diehard One Nation loyalists.
The young Brisbane woman turned her hand from playing the violin for a living to running Senator Hanson’s online and social media strategy during last year’s federal election campaign. She worked 16-hour days to manage the party’s Albion headquarters on a shoestring. Loyalty? It runs only one way in One Nation, Ms Beric complained yesterday, speaking publicly of her disillusionment with Ms Hanson.
The dysfunction behind the scenes has also hit the office of NSW senator Brian Burston, whose former personal assistant Diana Allen unloaded to The Australian yesterday. Party co-founder David Ettridge and former president and national treasurer Ian Nelson continue to take potshots at Senator Hanson and her high-profile lieutenant, James Ashby.
This was capped by the altercation on Tuesday outside a Perth court in which former One Nation senator Rod Culleton claims to have been assaulted by ex-state Liberal parliamentarian Anthony Fels, who wants to contest a seat in the March 11 West Australian election for One Nation. Police are investigating the incident that left Senator Culleton nursing bruises and a sprained wrist.
The One Nation website has not been updated since August 15 because, Ms Beric said, the offices of the three remaining senators did not pass on news to party headquarters. Only two of the 36 candidates introduced recently by Senator Hanson for a Queensland election expected this year have their profiles up.
Ms Beric, 32, resigned her office-bearer positions as national and Queensland secretary on October 13 last year and was locked out of the site but with the know-how to run it. The page templates and codes to update it were “all in my head”, she said yesterday, breaking her silence about the drama inside the Hanson camp.
She emphasised that she did not “spit the dummy”, but the situation had become untenable.
She was told that her authorisation to do any other work as a fulltime contractor had been withdrawn, and she should leave what she was doing to get the party registered for the WA election.
“I am disappointed at the treatment of some people in the party,” she said. “I am disappointed that the party seems to have swayed away from its principles and values, but there are some great candidates still involved and I hope that they will stay true to themselves and the Australian people.”
Diana Allen lasted only seven weeks in Senator Burston’s office, and said she quit after claiming the chief-of-staff referred to her as a “petulant princess”.
“That’s not how you talk to a woman of 50,” she said from her Lane Cove home in Sydney.
Senator Hanson hit back yesterday at Mr Nelson and Ms Beric, saying they had “their noses out of joint” through missing out on jobs following the election. She agreed she had been a friend of 66-year-old Mr Nelson — though not a close one — and that he had approached her to rejoin the party when it was revived in 2013. “He has just turned and is basically a lonely man,” Senator Hanson said. “One Nation was basically his whole life. He has no one in his life and now that he has lost this, he has … become bitter and nasty. I’ve got no time for him.”
As for Ms Beric, who worked 16-hour days during the election for a gross salary of $800 a week, Senator Hanson said: “Saraya was vying for a job in the parliamentary office, which I told her she wasn’t capable of doing.”
Ms Beric disputed this yesterday. After Senator Hanson asked her to set aside her music career, she became “Jacky of all trades” in One Nation, managing the office in Brisbane, taking on the roles of IT fixer, candidate manager during the election as well as social media manager and office-bearer.
When Mr Nelson went into bat for her to get a raise, Mr Ashby offered to increase her pay to $50,000 a year. Mr Nelson said this was insulting; forthright discussions with Senator Hanson ensued.
Ms Beric said, however, that Senator Hanson never spoke to her about a new role and she had not sought one on the parliamentary staff.
She had wanted to focus on marketing and online work. “Pauline just sent James to talk to me,” Ms Beric said. “If she was told I wanted a job with her, that was not the case. She has not bothered to have a conversation with me.”
Mr Nelson said: “I was disgusted by how Saraya was treated and told them so. I couldn’t stand how the place was being run, and I’m not the only one.”
The man who replaced Ms Beric as office manager and Mr Nelson as treasurer, Senator Hanson’s brother-in-law Greg Smith, said he couldn’t say why they had severed their links with the party.
Mr Nelson handed in his membership card last August, ending a 20-year association with One Nation in which he also served as state director of the pivotal Queensland division.
“It’s the same for any business: if you lose people they have to be replaced,” Mr Smith said. “That’s just the nature of the business. People leave for many reasons.”
Ms Allen said she had worked for media companies and top corporates including Leighton Contractors, Siemens and Honeywell Group, and was appalled by the chaos in One Nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment