Snorkelling off Great Keppel Island, Queensland's One Nation senators Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts saw for themselves evidence that the reef is flourishing.
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Hanson was reported as saying: "If you actually go deeper, 12-20 metres deeper in the ocean, the reefs there are in pristine condition."
How Hanson concluded that on the basis of a surface snorkel is a mystery. As she acknowledged, it was her first time in a wetsuit. To dive to 12 metres requires scuba equipment, and some degree of prior diving experience. Neither of which she had.
Why One Nation's end of the parliamentary session picnic was held 1000km from where the worst bleaching is recorded matters not. What matters are the pictures of Pauline in a wetsuit, frolicking on the Great Barrier Reef.
Another One Nation stunt which fared not so well was Malcolm Roberts' Parliament House press conference dissing CSIRO and NASA earlier this month.
Yet as time passes, the One Nation stunts will become more sophisticated. As for solutions, they have none.
As former senator John Black astutely wrote in the weekend press, the solution to the disaffection feeding One Nation is creating new jobs in the regions most affected by unemployment.
This is behind Barnaby Joyce's plot to reduce environmental flows in the Murray-Darling, and his expensive relocation of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority to his Armidale electorate.
Barnaby argues the loss of irrigation allocations in upstream communities is causing jobs losses.
There is rising panic, especially in the LNP, that One Nation will hold the balance of seats after the next Queensland election. It need not, and the example of the Kidston government in Queensland at the beginning of last century is worth examining.
Kidston was a Labor member for Rockhampton, who led a ministry of Labor members and urban liberals between 1908 and 1911. His Lab-Lib ministry eventually came unstuck because of Labor intransigence, but he enacted significant reforms to the franchise, (such as the quaint idea of one vote, one value), industrial relations and Commonwealth-State financial relations.
Kidston's reformist governments put to the sword the revolving door Tory ministries known as the Continuing Ministry, and paved the way for the fully fledged ALP ministry elected in 1915, and which lasted until 1929. Kidston was also an ardent separationist.
Both the LNP and the ALP acknowledge that One Nation is a political pestilence. For one of the major parties to support the other (which has the greater number of seats) on matters of confidence and supply for the fixed four-year term would shut out One Nation. The strongest resistance to this would come most likely from the ALP machine men.
Such a move would represent a move to the radical centre, a notion which surfaced again last week with Noel Pearson's launch of Troy Bramston's biography of Paul Keating. Indeed, our leaders facing the threat of One Nation could well ask themselves: What would Paul Keating do?
Dr John Harrison is senior lecturer in the University of Queensland's School of Communication and Arts.
