Mike Newman: One Nation’s new man failed to use precautions and got himself into trouble
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During an interview with the Herald last month, Mike Newman, One Nation’s neophyte leader in NSW, described immigration as a “federal issue” which had been “done to death”.
“I’m a migrant,” said Newman, whose family hails from the United Kingdom, although, according to ASIC records, he was born in St Leonards, Sydney. “My wife’s a migrant,” he added. “I mean, you know, there’s a million ways to skin the cat. It’s not really something that I can give you ... what you’re looking for.”
One Nation’s NSW leader Mike Newman with Pauline Hanson.James BrickwoodIt was an odd response, given it was about the keystone issue around which One Nation has built its surging popularity. But since his left-field elevation last month, the former investment banker and trade commissioner has made it clear that he wants to be a new type of One Nation politician.
As the party attempts to make the conversion from the fringes to mainstream popularity, Newman has sought to focus on energy and the economy.
In interviews and on his own Substack, Newman talks about what he views as a bloated public service holding back productivity, and renewable energy policies harming investment in coalmining.
Sure, there is a little bit of anti-wokery thrown in for the base, but like his father – the businessman and former ABC chairman Maurice Newman – the One Nation recruit is clearly a small-government, free-markets guy, more comfortable talking trade impediments with the Asia Pacific than the latest culture war du jour.
He’s quickly learning that the Rolling Stones weren’t kidding. You can’t always get what you want.
Newman may have thought no one would pay attention to his speech at Joanna Howe’s anti-abortion rally on Tuesday night. He clearly was not across the issue. But his clumsy narrow-casting quickly led him into the headlights of a debate that One Nation doesn’t want to elevate into a topline issue.
After telling the crowd One Nation wanted abortion “stopped”, Newman backtracked on Wednesday, saying he had been speaking about terminations for sex selection and late-term abortions. Next, he appeared on News24, where a well-briefed presenter, Laura Jayes, ran rings around him. He labelled his comments at the rally a “foot-in-mouth moment”, then proceeded to put his foot back in.
While One Nation was against sex-selection abortions, he didn’t know how often they happened. Nor was he aware of the number of late-term abortions in NSW. While he conceded the number of terminations after 22 weeks for a non-medical reason would probably be “quite small” and said those decisions should be made on “a case-by-case basis”, he also claimed, without evidence, that babies had been “left in Petri dishes to die”.
Not knowing those numbers off the top of his head was one thing, but Newman clearly wasn’t aware of the existing law in NSW, which, for example, requires a woman to have an abortion signed off by two specialists after 22 weeks. His ignorance was likely because, as he admitted to Jayes, he’d only been speaking to Howe on the subject. She is a strident anti-abortion activist who has been accused of importing a MAGA-style debate on abortion into Australia.
While the likes of Howe may command a big audience on social media, they live on the edges of this debate. Anyone seeking to terminate a pregnancy after 22 weeks is not doing so lightly. Most reasonable people will understand that.
As Jayes put to Newman, “How often do you think women are going to seek an abortion at 22 weeks, when they’ve got … a belly showing, just because they’ve changed their mind?”
“Well, look, the numbers … would be quite small, I would imagine,” he replied.
Newman apologised for his comments, but the abortion detour feeds into the sense that, as One Nation grows, it is struggling to stay on track. It is also a sharp reminder that Newman can’t be all things to all people. More broadly, it raises the question of what One Nation, and Newman, have to offer at a state level.
While complaining about lazy public servants might be popular with conservative commentators such as John Anderson or Rita Panahi, Newman has given Labor an easy attack line early in his tenure. As Industrial Relations Minister Sophie Cotsis told parliament on Wednesday, “Where does he want to cut the jobs? Where in western Sydney? How many firies?”
State politics, far more than the federal sphere, is about service delivery, and while the broader electorate is in a mutinous mood, it’s not at all clear that One Nation is talking about issues that voters in NSW care about. Newman may be a big brain, but he’s yet to show he’s a good operator.
Michael McGowan is state political editor.
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