Senators Lidia Thorpe, Fatima Payman and Mehreen Faruqi are using their positions to fight back against the systemic racism that Senator Pauline Hanson represents, argues Pip Hinman.听
Pauline Hanson
Many people in Anglo societies seemingly can鈥檛 imagine that the fairytale queen they recognise might look different to those who live in the countries from where the shining jewels in her crown and sceptre were stolen, writes Carlo Sands.
Angela Lynch聽discusses the impact of the merger of the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court on victims and survivors of domestic violence.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced yet another inquiry into the family law system, with Liberal MP Kevin Andrews and One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson as leader and deputy chair, respectively. Neither are known for supporting the Family Court nor their expertise in family violence issues, writes Sue Reilly.
The bizarreness of Australian politics was summed up in multi-millionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer鈥檚 election advertisement accusing Labor of 鈥渟upporting the big end of town鈥. He's right, though he is in no position to point the finger, writes Carlo Sands.
Comrades! After many years of debate on the left on how to win socialism, a clear path has opened in Australia 鈥 hack the attorney-general office鈥檚 email to instruct federal Coalition MPs to vote for a motion to socialise the means of production.
Sometimes the most powerful protests are those made in silence by brave individuals deciding to take a stand.
Anyone who is a public figure can expect a bit of hate mail. Recently I received about half a dozen colourful phone messages after WA One Nation parliamentarian Charles Smith published a Facebook meme attacking the City of Fremantle for having "the most Un-Australian [sic] council in the Nation". Included were my contact details and those of the Mayor, with outraged right-wingers encouraged to communicate their rage at us for "destroying Australia Day".
The Australian billionaire Dick Smith has been on the stump again warning of the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.
鈥淚f we're not careful, if you end up with really wealthy people and lots of poor people, in the end the poor people will rebel,鈥 he said late last year.
聽鈥淵ou look at what happened in Russia in 1917 where they ended up with the tsar and the tsar's friends who are all equivalent billionaires.
聽鈥淭he pitchforks came out and we had revolution.鈥
I had considered the racist abuse hurled at Labor Senator Sam Dastyari to be a deliberate publicity stunt by a group of neo-Nazis, enabled by a climate of rising bigotry and white nationalism, on the grounds that they deliberately sought out the senator, filmed their racist abuse and posted it on Facebook.
That was before Pauline Hanson explained otherwise. The senator, campaigning in Queensland, pointed out that Dastyari was just using abuse he faced in a pub on November 8 to sell his book.
The seeds of the current crisis of confidence in the capitalist parties in Australia go back to the 1980s when the Bob Hawke Labor government implemented its version of Margaret Thatcher鈥檚 neoliberal economic policies. The Hawke government also managed to achieve what previous Coalition governments had failed to do 鈥 seriously weaken the union movement.
While these reforms did not immediately create right-wing populism, once the reforms started to really bite by the late 1990s, it began to develop around Pauline Hanson.
A poll of 1000 people by Essential Research has found 49% of respondents supported a blanket ban on Muslim immigration to Australia, 40% opposed the ban and 11% were not sure.
Young people aged 18鈥24 were the most likely to oppose a ban on Muslim immigration. Fifty-eight per cent of young people opposed a ban, compared with 28% who supported it.
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