> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why the Media Are Going After ON - URL: https://goodoil.news/why-the-media-are-going-after-on/ - Published: 2026-09-15T23:30:41.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-15T23:30:40.000Z - Description: It’s all about saving the Uniparty in Victoria. - Author: Lushington Brady - Tags: AUS Politics, Polls If the non-stop hit pieces on One Nation over the last week have looked to you like a co-ordinated smear campaign, that’s because they are. Why now, though, you ask? Because the legacy media are desperate to try and hobble One Nation before the Victorian state election in just over a month. If One Nation even did as well in the Victorian state election as they did in South Australia, it would be a devastating blow for the uniparty and their legacy media bootlickers. As ABC shill **Patricia Karvelas** whined, after the Farrer by-election win for One Nation, the party are becoming “legitimised” by winning elections, which they proceeded to do in thumping fashion just a few weeks later, in a WA by-election. The absolute gut-punch for the uniparty, though, would be One Nation either winning a general state election outright, or holding the balance of power in a hung parliament, which is looming as the most likely outcome in Victoria. Labor and the Liberals are neck-and-neck, with the Liberals edging slightly ahead in the last week. But with One Nation rocketing up behind them, it’s almost certain that the Liberals will have to make a deal to form government, if at all. In 1992, **Jeff Kennett** won the election almost entirely in the regions. Thirty-four years later, Labor are once again toxic in the regions. It’s not just the appalling roads and the tsunami of debt: one of the biggest issues in regional Victoria is that vast swathes of rural landscapes are being bulldozed for solar panels, wind turbines and transmission towers. It’s an indication of how toxic the ‘renewables’ issue is in regional Victoria, that Labor Premier **Ben Carroll** is putting a big ‘green’ project on hold – until after the election. As if regional Victorians are going to be fooled by that for an instant. The latest Resolve numbers explain the panic. Labor is stuck on an election-losing 25 per cent primary. **Jess Wilson** has nudged the coalition to 28\. One Nation is sitting pretty on 23 and not moving. Wilson leads as preferred premier 28–20 over Carroll; **Warren Pickering** is on eight. And here’s the bit that has the press gallery chewing the furniture: after a week of ex-partner tell-alls, ice allegations, drink-driving admissions and “dysfunctional family life” splashed across the broadsheets, Pickering still scored a net-positive approval rating. That is why the smear campaign exists. Not because anyone in Collins Street suddenly discovered morality. It exists to kneecap One Nation just enough that frightened Liberal voters stay parked with Wilson, rather than finishing the job on a brand that spent a decade looking like Labor-lite with better tailoring. Save Jess from the toxic, dysfunctional Liberal trademark. Keep the orange wave in the ‘protest vote’ box where it can be lectured, not bargained with. Carroll, seven weeks into the job, cannot lift himself or his party. Only 19 per cent of Victorians think the state’s outlook will improve – 44 per cent think it will get worse. Net debt is marching toward $200 billion. Seventy-two per cent are worried about it: more than NSW, more than Queensland, which recently copped a credit downgrade for its own infrastructure binge, bringing it down to Victoria’s AA+. Remember that in 1992, a downgrade to AA+ was one of Jeff Kennett’s most potent campaign factors. Resolve’s **Jim Reed** put the quiet part in pollster-speak: debt and deficit are back in the vote. People are pricing the announcements again. The Suburban Rail Loop is the exhibit. A $33.3 billion first stage, already a monument to governing for everyone inside the tram tracks while the rest of the state can go hang. Given a straight choice, 49 per cent want the SRL put on ice: 27 per cent want to keep tunnelling. Free dental clinics at $230 million? Nice poster. Forty-three per cent said scrap it rather than add to the tab. Wilson’s line writes itself: more than a million dollars an hour just to service the debt. Money that is not going into schools, hospitals or roads. Carroll’s answer is the usual prestidigitation. He’s already “put a stop to unnecessary spending on the SRL”, found $1.1 billion of savings on a project that still swallows suburbs, and ditched a secret public-transport levy cooked up by Labor to feed the debt beast. Then he warns that a Liberal–One Nation deal would mean $40 billion in cuts that “cripple” frontline services. As if $40 billion isn’t chump change to a Victorian uniparty government. Out in the west, the same pattern, with taller toys. The Western Renewables Link, 190 kilometres of towers up to 85 metres, officially $1.5 billion, whispered in one fund report at $4 billion, was supposed to bulldoze rural land from Bulgana to Sydenham through Melton, Ripon and Eureka. Regional communities are up in arms. And: presto! Carroll has now commissioned a cost review due after polling day and paused compulsory acquisitions until next year. Wilson is parroting the same announcement. How convenient – and does anyone really think the bulldozers won’t fire up immediately after the election? One Nation are the only party to put a stop to the whole destructive scam. What are they complaining about, whines the uber-lefty Melbourne rag, the *Age*? Landowners are being offered compensation. Yeah, well so were the James brothers, when the railroad company took their land. It’s not about the cheque from a bunch of taxpayer-subsidised cowboys based in India or China, it’s about who decides what happens to the paddock: the people who farm it, or a planning minister in Spring Street feeding Melbourne’s appetite for ‘renewables’ while the regions turn into an industrial junkyard. Kennett’s regions remember what a government that notices them looks like. This lot is hoping a six-week freeze and a pile of compensation letters will do instead. It won’t. The smear on Pickering is the tell. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.**