When James Ashby (Slippergate, Planegate, Assaultgate, Printgate, Nogate at all), Pauline Hanson’s Chief-of-Stuff for what Police described as One Nation Party, went to New York with his potty-mouthed mate Steve Dickson, few would have known that he is apparently owner of a multi-national sign and printing business with connections to Zanzibar, Bermuda and Queensland’s Sunshine Coast..
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| Ashby in action – against Senator Brian Burston |
Yes, Coastal Signs & Printing of Beerwah is Ashby’s company and shares global HQ with one of his other businesses, Black Bull Pty Ltd at 2907 Old Gympie Rd, just a stone’s throw away from the great Steve Irwin family’s Australia Zoo. Google map photos shows this powerhouse of international signage, obviously eco-friendly and sustainable here: https://goo.gl/maps/mWAFtQ2ckG82
ASIC records confirm this, as does Coastal’s own website, but we can find no sign of a sign for this business, just one for ‘Hairdressing’ at the same address. Our investigations then took us to the ASIC-recorded ‘principal place of business’ – and bingo! We found it in Zanzibar…err Court, Parrearra, Qld 4575. Here it is…but still no sign of a sign.
However, the occupant (not Ashby), listed by ASIC as a former Secretary (possibly a $2 company broker) is listed as being born in that well-known safe harbour of free trade and accountancy, Bermuda.
This is real Ian Fleming stuff and even Mr Ashby described his recent Big Apple Al Jazeera ‘sting’ experience as ‘like a James Bond novel’.
But seriously…
Coastal Signs & Print’s website states ‘We prefer coming to you for signage quotes. It allows us to get accurate measurements, see where the sign is going and ensure we choose the correct materials for the job.’ Fair enough for a workshop-based business in the bush and the examples shown on Coastal’s website certainly look good and professional with equipment stated to include an HP FB550, Epson and Mimaki printers and CNC routers.
So, there appears nothing amiss with the competency of Coastal Signs & Print but, Australians are increasingly concerned over the behaviour of its proprietor James Ashby who, according to a report in the Australian Financial Review, was accused of profiteering by intimidating One Nation candidates to use his sign business, at inflated prices. Furthermore, he was recorded in a meeting where Hanson was present, suggesting that print prices for election material could be doubled to ‘make some money’ by claiming it back from Queensland’s Electoral Commission.
He subsequently described his choice of words as ‘unfortunate’ and ‘brainstorming’ – taken out of context. What he was recorded saying was: “I will deny I ever said this but what stops us from getting a middle man or gracing … I am happy to grace in cash, double the price of whatever it is. We say to the candidates we will fund 50 per cent of this package. So the package might be $5000. You’re going to pay $2500 and we’ll pay the other $2500 of the $5000. The other $2500 is the profit. It’s the fat. And I’ll write it off. I don’t want the cash for it.”
Other controversies include alleged assault on former One Nation Senator Brian Burston, for which his Parliamentary pass was revoked, and the undeclared donation concerning the use of his private plane to ferry Pauline Hanson around during the 2016 election campaign, which incurred a $1,000 fine.
Guns and money
It is Ashby’s and Dickson’s recorded comments while in the USA that are most concerning, about sourcing funding from the NRA, up to $20 million, to ‘soften’ Australia’s gun Laws introduced under the Howard Government following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Mainstream media has broadcast these widely, so they need no repeating here. With the Christchurch abomination barely two weeks old, the pair appeared in the documentary How to Sell a Massacre, aired on the ABC, after being filmed last year drunkenly bandying around the prospect of having "the whole government by the balls" if it were to receive millions from the NRA (National Rifle Association of the USA).
They say the truth comes out when you are drunk, so Ashby’s lame excuse that: ‘we hit the sauce’ smacks of desperation. This is a very dangerous man, working for a potentially dangerous political party, whose leader is also on record as describing the Port Arthur massacre as ‘a conspiracy.’ I watched the Port Arthur situation unfold live in the departure lounge of Sydney airport, on my way to Melbourne for a PacPrint board meeting in 1996; it was real and horrifying and Howard’s gun laws have been proven to reduce such atrocities, as will Jacinda Ardern’s in New Zealand.
There is no logical reason for anyone outside of the military to own automatic weapons. Sporting shooters and farmers can achieve all they need with non-automatic guns and rifles. Automatic weapons are for highly trained military and law enforcement units who know restraint as well as lethal force when appropriate. This was clearly proven in Christchurch when, despite murdering fifty innocent people, the alleged perpetrator was captured alive by dedicated officers of the Law.
James Ashby claims he was set-up by Al Jazeera journalists and has even suggested that it was foreign government interference in Australian politics. Hypocrisy! Ashby was prepared to take $20 million from a foreign lobby group to weaken Australia’s gun laws and claimed Qatar (Al Jazeera is Qatari-owned) is behind it all. For the record, Qatar is one of the most liberal of Islamic states and one where women have had the vote ever since parliamentary democracy was implemented in 1998 by the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa AI-Thani. Incidentally. The first thing he did upon seizing power in 1995 was to abolish censorship of the press. Al Jazeera is an independent media organisation and ‘not a spy agency’, according to Australian journalist Peter Greste, who worked for them for five years and spent a year in an Egyptian prison for doing his job – reporting news for Al Jazeera.
One of our own?
So here we have one of our own – a sign printing business (it looks like all offset is outsourced), whose owner is aspiring to a position of great political power, who states effectively that ‘greed is good’ when gouging the public purse, whose temper tantrums include physical assault, who advocates more guns in our communities and is prepared to accept funds from the most powerful gun lobby group on the planet, and one who supports a party leader who thinks our worst gun-crime tragedy was a ‘conspiracy.’ What a guy. In a News.com report, journalist and author Mike Carlton was moved to describe him thus:
“James Ashby is like a cockroach in a backyard dunny. He scuttles here, he scuttles there, recoils from the daylight..”
Personally, I think the guy needs help. The behaviour patterns are similar to those of someone with a narcissistic-psychopathic disorder. There could even be past traumatic experience from childhood.
Whatever, I have a lot of mates in the sign and display industry and James Ashby is not one of them.
