Pauline Hanson’s views haven’t changed since her first speech. But now she is resonating with Australia’s bitter and resentful mood |
Thirty years ago, when I watched Pauline Hanson deliver her first speech to the House of Representatives, there was a sense around the halls of federal parliament that she was a radical, racist outlier who’d soon disappear.
Hanson has survived more than her share of political vagaries to the point her One Nation is topping party popularity polls. Indeed, One Nation’s recent success in South Australia and at the Farrer byelection presages potentially far broader electoral wins.
The problem Hanson and One Nation pose for the major parties is that the anti-establishment politics juggernaut she has become defies modern Australian political orthodoxy. It’s a vibe and a movement as much as a party vehicle. And right now, the bitter mood it harvests is one of contempt, envy, anger (at “mass migration”, Muslims, Aboriginal people and many others besides) that has long simmered at the heart of Australian society.
In hindsight, what she said in her first speech in September 1996 formed a list of greatest hits she’s returned – and progressively added – to with ever greater efficacy.
Australia, she said, was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”. She wanted “multiculturalism abolished”. She also maintained that a “reverse racism is applied to mainstream Australians” and referenced “industries that flourish in our society servicing Aboriginals, multiculturalists and a host of other minority groups”. She was “fed up to the back teeth with the inequalities that are being promoted by the government and paid for by the taxpayer under the assumption that Aboriginals are the most disadvantaged people in Australia”.
This, of course, is no less demonstrably false than it is today; Australian........