How the Coalition revived Hanson
By Peter Boyle
What's behind the revival of the racist Pauline Hanson's One Nation party? Hanson and One Nation never went away; they just "dropped off the front pages" for a few months.
One Nation got back in the news when it was found to be polling significantly in the Queensland election campaign, enjoying 15% across the state and up to 30% in a couple of seats in the semi-rural retirement belt of that state.
One Nation became the issue when it became clear that the National-Liberal Coalition would need One Nation preferences to get re-elected, and the Coalition decided to give One Nation preferences ahead of the ALP in all but one seat (contested by a Liberal of Asian background).
The Queensland Nationals sought to win back ground from One Nation in their heartland by digging their heels in on native title and by insisting that One Nation stole their policies on Aboriginal affairs! Howard did his bit with his defence of the right to be racist and his attack on so-called political correctness. This only gave heart to One Nation.
Now One Nation claims to have 25,000 members and "active supporters", and 275 branches, nationally. Its strongest base is in Queensland; NSW comes second. Each state has 100 branches, according to One Nation national director David Ettridge.
How did One Nation get this far?
Last year's anti-One Nation protests, largely spontaneous and based on the initial shock at her explicitly racist campaigning, dissipated after a few months, but One Nation continued to organise.
Under the tutelage of a new svengali, David Oldfield (a former Liberal right-winger from Sydney's North Shore), alliances were forged with some of the plethora of small far-right sects. This brought intrigue as the would-be fuehrers squabbled for territory and influence, but Oldfield rode it out. New, right-wing, populist parties need to get their cadre from somewhere.
Disguised message
Hanson's shock troops are drawn from the weird sects of the right, but One Nation has a broader audience. It has managed to draw support from significant numbers of the disaffected and disgruntled by making more prominent her protectionist, racist, anti-gun control and law and order messages.
It is appealing to the small farmers, small businesspeople and workers who have been hit by the economic rationalist policies pursued by Coalition and Labor alike.
Hanson's racist message is increasingly sly. We are only asking for equal rights for all Australians, she says. "Why are people calling me a racist?"
That's enough to tap the racism that still runs deep in white Australia. Late 20th century Australian racism is sly. Having no arguments to justify itself rationally, it has to pretend to be something else.
Coalition and Labor governments have given quiet encouragement to racism by urging Australian workers to compete against workers in other nations and by scapegoating new immigrants and indigenous Australians for unemployment, declining social services and even environmental problems.
The Coalition government measures restricting the welfare rights of new immigrants have been supported by the Labor opposition, as has the greater restriction on the legal rights of refugees. The gap between Coalition and Labor over native title continues to narrow. Meanwhile Hanson boasts that the Howard government is being influenced by her party on these issues.
One Nation has also moved to tap the racist heritage of Australian Laborism by using the rhetoric of protectionism and railing against foreign, in particular Asian, investment.
The ALP may have long moved from the slogan "Socialism for the whiteman", but the racist ideological heritage runs deep, particularly among older Labor supporters. There have been reports in the Brisbane media of some ALP branches in rural Queensland going over to One Nation.
Victims of neo-liberalism
The major contribution to One Nation's growth by the Coalition (and former Labor federal government) has been the creation of the social basis for right-wing populism.
A decade and a half of bipartisan economic "rationalism" and neo-liberal economic "reform" has created the unemployment-blighted regional cities where the pain has been multiplied by the thousands of farmers driven off their land. Wholesale job destruction in the public and private sectors, the whittling back of welfare, health and education funding have spelled ever greater insecurity for most people, especially pensioners and low-skilled workers.
For two decades, corporate profits have been paid for with ever greater insecurity for the great majority, and the Howard government has escalated this process with its vicious cuts in its first two budgets and now with its threat to bring in a GST.
Howard's latest political mantra is "Stability, security and safety". But the Coalition's real policy was revealed the day after Patrick Stevedores locked out its waterside workers on April 7. In the midst of the short-lived euphoria on the Coalition benches in Parliament House, a minister blurted out that no worker could be secure in their job unless he or she delivered greater productivity.
There is worse insecurity to come as the next recession rolls in. The national accounts figures just released show that the Australian economy has already begun its downward phase. Domestic demand has begun to flatten dramatically, and stocks are building up. Unemployment has begun to rise.
This recession is going to be blamed on the "Asian economic crisis" — something One Nation can only gain from. In reality, that crisis is nothing but the consequence of the neo-liberal economics being practised all over the world. They "let the markets rip", and — surprise, surprise — they did! Asia just happened to be where the global crisis struck first.
Howard's cry that Australia is not part of Asia did not stop the collapse of the Australian dollar, but it signalled to a racist local constituency just who is to be blamed for the crisis.
Economic nationalism
The real power of One Nation is the combination of racist scapegoating and economic nationalism. Coalition and Labor politicians may insist that One Nation has no real solutions. But people have seen what their solutions amount to: job destruction, cuts to services and the destruction of entire communities. Their credibility with most of the public is zilch.
If One Nation has some success in Queensland and this is followed up by more success in the federal election (a double dissolution would increase One Nation's chances of a Senate seat) then Australia may join those other imperialist countries, like France, Germany, Italy and Austria, where racist, right-wing populist parties have become a major third force in recent years.
Why does One Nation appear set to gain electorally from the broadening dissatisfaction with the Coalition and Labor?
The other parties in parliament, the Democrats and Greens, have not presented clear progressive solutions on the key economic issues. In fact, they present only a more timid version of the economic nationalism that One Nation espouses.
The same was true of the old Australian left, the former Communist Party of Australia and its various split-offs, which for decades ignored Lenin's warning that the nationalism of a rich oppressor nation, like Australia, is always reactionary. The new left, in particular the Democratic Socialists, has yet to make its mark in the electoral arena.
There was always a racist, right-wing component of the "third party vote" in recent years. Not all of them were supporters of the alphabet soup of right-wing electoral fronts. At least one of One Nation's campaigners in Brisbane is a former Queensland Green.
Even more revealingly, retiring Democrat NSW Legislative Councillor Elizabeth Kirkby said recently she expects the Democrats to lose more votes to One Nation than to Labor following Cheryl Kernot's defection. Apparently there was not much of a gap between the right-wing of the Democrats and One Nation, and Hanson is poised to take the Democrat right.