Tne Hanson pestilence
p. 55 · Read in the full issue
Opinion
THE Queensland election on June 13 saw Pauline Hanson’s ultra-nationalist One Nation Party rip through the Australian political land scape like a cyclone, decimating the conserva tive National and Liberal parties and threatening havoc in national politics as well. The fledgling party, just 14 months old, won 23 per cent of the vote and took more seats than Prime Minister, John Howard’s Liberal party.
Never before in Australia’s political history has a new party been able to reach dizzy heights. This stunning elec toral victory threatens more than just ten new One-Nation faces in the 89-seat Queensland parliament. It has the potential to divide Australia along racial lines, derail the process of reconciliation with the Aboriginal community and to make Australia a meaner, more inward-looking soci ety that has to struggle hard to win the respect of its neigh bours in Asia. It even has the potential to affect Australia’s balance of trade by frightening-off Asian tourists and slow ing the growth of students coming to study here.
The people who voted for Pauline Hanson are those liv ing in rural areas who feel the major parties have failed to heed their plight. They are, like Pauline Hanson, pro-gun and worried about the impact that globalisation is having on jobs for Australians. Where Pauline Hanson differs from the much more moderate Democrats, who are also critical of many of the economic rationalist policies adopt ed by both Labor and the Coalition, is in her willingness to provide scapegoats on which the disaffected can vent their frustration and conspiracy theories that feed their paranoia.
Pauline Hanson’s most obvious scapegoat is the Aboriginal community. She has made vitriolic comments about what she calls ‘the Aboriginal industry’, wants the abolition of native title and the axing of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. She has tapped further into the ugly vein of racism, which has always been at its most virulent in rural Queensland, by warning that Australia risks being ‘swamped by Asians’. Her policy solutions are an end to immigration and all foreign aid.
Funding for the arts, she says, should be redirected into a People’s Bank that would provide low interest loans to farmers. There is no doubt Pauline Hanson presents both a frightening picture and a powerful new force in Australian politics but before we get too panic stricken it is important to remember that the vast majority of voters (77 per cent) chose NOT to vote for Mrs Hanson. As an editorial in The
National in Papua New Guinea pointed out, most countries have a party that plugs into public disaffection and no matter what nuisance it creates it is important to
remember that One Nation does not represent the broader face of Australia that is now irrevocably multi-cultural.
In fact, the decimation of the Liberal Party was not because its supporters left to vote for One Nation but because city dwellers were so angry that the Liberals had given Mrs Hanson succour, by passing their preferences to her, that they left in droves to vote Labor. This highlights a growing schism between country and city - one that is now an enormous headache for Prime Minister Howard and his Liberal. National Party coalition.
John Howard, says the preference issue is one for state branches of his party to decide. Mr Howard’s other prob lem is the implications that One Nation holds for his poli cy agenda. The sale of the government’s telecommunica tions giant, Telstra, the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) and his plan to go to a double dissolu tion election to push through his 10-point plan on Native title are all threatened by the One Nation victory. i' further alienate rural voters. The Native Title plan because, on cut may not be able to win enough seats at a double dissolution election (which gives parties a Senate seat with half the usual quota of votes) to make possible a victory at a joint sitting of par liament. a nation-wide surge in support for One Nation, which boosted its share of the vote from 7 per cent to 11 per cent.
So has Howard - who was much criticised in One Nation’s nature of the party (he went on record saying Mrs Hanson’s supporters ‘were no more racist that you or D - been hoist mere criticism of One Nation to cut much mustard with One Nation supporters, who have tasted power. In the weeks before the Queensland election Pauline Hanson made an extraordinary speech in parliament in which she accused Aboriginal leaders of being more interested in title was a ’scam’ that ’is the precursor to the establish ment of taxpayer-funded sovereign Aboriginal states’. John Howard, finally stung into action by polls that suggested a collapse of the Queensland Liberal ''National vote, retorted that this was ‘not only an inaccurate and dishonest speech, but it verges on the deranged’. It doesn’t seem to have had any impact on the election result in Queensland.
Having tasted power, the One Nation cat is well and give it parliamentary resources it has only dreamed of, until now. We can only hope that the increased scrutiny that comes with a place in parliament will take its toll on One Nation’s credibility before any federal election, and that voters see that, in a complex world, it takes more than One Nation’s wish for things, such as job creation, to make it happen. ■
Jemima Garrett