With this week’s revelations about the extraordinary visit to the US gun lobby by One Nation’s James Ashby, and Steve Dickson, Morrison’s shilly-shallying became untenable.
The extraordinary expose is a blow for the One Nation leader and complicates Scott Morrison’s struggle in handling what were already awkward questions about his attitude to preferencing One Nation.
Federal Labor is pushing hard on James Ashby. A prime motive is embarrassing the Coalition over preferences, ahead of the Queensland election, and the later federal one.
At an extraordinary news conference, Hanson staffer James Ashby admitted the revelation was ‘embarrassing’, adding that it was a ‘poor choice of words on my behalf’.