One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson was headline news yesterday – but according to Nevena Spirovska, who wanted to be identified as former Federal Secretary of the Australian Sex Party, the media missed the point.
Hanson spoke at her first-ever National Press Club appearance on Wednesday, promising to obliterate SBS and the ABC, expressing many concerns about immigration, and threatening some journalists about their reporting.
During her speech, an unauthorised banner slowly rolled down the screen behind the senator. It displayed a mocked-up photo of her wearing flashy sunglasses and throwing around cash. It read: “I opposed a pay rise for workers while I took a $100 000 pay rise for myself.”
Advocacy group GetUp! soon claimed responsibility for the stunt. But Spirovska posted on LinkedIn on Thursday night that yesterday’s news about the incident focussed on the wrong thing.
“What a masterclass in missing the target.
“The banner was meant to highlight a voting record. But nobody is talking about that. They’re talking about the security breach, the Australian Federal Police referral, and the spectacle of the club’s chief executive, Maurice Reilly, pulling the thing down himself.
“None of this is an argument against protest. Implied freedom of political communication exists so that figures like Hanson can be challenged head on and in public. But the stunt itself felt dated, a mid-2000s relic of an activism that hasn’t noticed the room has changed. Spectacle over substance, and it boomeranged. Terribly.
“Plenty of political stunts land. This one left the actual argument on the floor with the banner.”
Spirovska also wrote a Q and A explaining further what the media missed.
Q: Tell me, why did the stunt miss the brief?
A: It won the photo and lost the story. The plan was to highlight Senator Hanson’s already documented and publicly available voting record. Instead the headlines ran: “GetUp’s security breach”, “Australian Federal Police referral”, “what if it was a bomb”, and “GetUp employee who filmed stunt runs away.”
Pauline became the person something was done to, not the politician with something to answer for.
Q: What is the point of a political stunt?
A: A stunt is a borrowed stage. You hijack someone else’s platform and use the stolen seconds to move an audience. The test isn’t “did it get attention”, it is who were we reaching and did this make them more or less likely to move our way? By that test, this one moved people. Away from GetUp.
Q: So what happens now? Can it be redeemed?
A: Partly. The story, no. The substance, maybe, if they kill the theatre and prove the case.The first cycle is gone and you do not get it back. The footage, Hanson rebranding the photo as her own, and the Australian Federal Police referral are all locked in. Every fresh development allows One Nation to replay the story.
The second cycle is already arriving: the Australian Federal Police investigation, and the National Press Club board rejecting David Sharaz’s membership and banning all GetUp staff from future events. And underneath it, the corrosive damage.
Fence-sitters fed up with the cost of living or record high immigration numbers, watching a well-resourced activist group with no plan for their concerns try to scream over the one person talking about them.
Q: Without seeming to encourage anyone – when it comes to ‘stunts’ – why do some work and some don’t?
A: Engineered, theatrical, built to provoke a reaction and capture an audience. They’re hard to land and out of vogue, which is why there are so few. We remember The Chaser and John Safran cutting through, but that was a different time and cycle.
A stunt works when it makes a true thing impossible to ignore and causes the powerful squirm. It fails when it makes you the story.
Main image: Nevena Spirovska. Image: LinkedIn