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THE WHITE QUEEN | One Nation and the Politics of Race |
David Marr |
RANGA REDUX
One afternoon last November, Pauline Hanson stood under threatening Canberra skies and cracked a bottle of bubbles to celebrate the victory of Donald Trump. She was beside herself with excitement. Words tumbled out of her:
Hi, everyone. Were out the front of Parliament House, Canberra, Australia, and why we are here well, Im so excited that Donald Trump looks like hes just over the line and Im so happy about it because this is putting out a clear message to everyone around the world that the people power is now happening and its happened in Australia.
Emotions cross Hansons face like storms over a desert. The prevailing weather is petulance but she shows delight vividly. Her eyes flash and that tight red mouth breaks into a winning grin. Love or loathe this woman, you can always tell what shes thinking. On the afternoon of Trumps victory, Hansons face registered vindication, glee and such breathless pleasure she seemed to be claiming a hand in his triumph. Flanked by one of her senators, she toasted the president to be, the American people (Good on you, guys), Brexit and the triumphant return of One Nation to Canberra. Its all about people power, she declared, raising her glass of Black Pig. And Im so happy.
The return of Pauline Hanson calls for national reflection. A strange gap has opened between the mood of this country and the temper of its politics. The decent Australia revealed in poll after poll seems not to be the country our politicians are representing. Most Australians reject everything Hanson stands for, but politics in this country has been orbiting around One Nation since the day she returned to Canberra. The lesson from her poor showing in Western Australia is that this doesnt have to be. Yet politicians are showing little more enthusiasm in its aftermath for doing what needs to be done: tackling Hanson head-on. They know its a risky strategy: shes durable and Turnbull can barely govern without her block of senators behind him.
This woman went to prison, danced the cha-cha on national television for a couple of years, and failed so often at the ballot box she became a running joke. But the truth is she never left us. She was always knocking on the door. Most of those defeats at the polls were close-run things. For twenty years political leaders appeased Hansons followers while working to keep her out of office. The first strategy tainted Australian politics. The second eventually failed. So shes with us again the Kabuki make-up, that mop of red hair and the voice telling us what we already know: Im fed up. The years show. So does the determination etched into her face. She doesnt rant as much these days. Shes got the art of the soundbite down, says Simon Hunt, who dogged her last time as the monstrous Pauline Pantsdown. Hes watching and waiting to see if he will pounce again. He rates her better with the camera now, better at laughing off hostile questions, better at switching the topic, better at filling the gaps when her sentences break down. Shes just another politician. But six or seven years on Sunrise havent touched her voice. It says Youre just like us, Pauline. And the damage of the years? Hunt hesitates. Remember back then when she said one time: I am the mother of the nation? Maybe she is now.
This is an Australian story. Positioning herself as the local leader of an international uprising is a wild boast. She commands nothing like the numbers backing Trump and the Brexit leader Nigel Farage and the daughter of the French far right Marine Le Pen. Compared to them, Hanson is a bit player. And this is a better country. No swathe of Australia was destroyed by the global financial crisis. Most of us dont share the toxic fears of immigration driving the United Kingdom out of Europe. Even so, public discourse has focused since her return on globalisation, the death of manufacturing, wages growth, inequality, grim prospects in little towns and the nations exasperation with politics. Those issues arent irrelevant, but we are not facing the facts about Hanson and One Nation. Whats driving them is the same as last time: race.
Aborigines are forgotten. Asians are old hat. These days Hanson targets Muslims, and that brought her over the line in 2016. She was on the hustings in Western Australia in January this year when a crazed man drove his car into an afternoon crowd in Melbourne. The bodies were still being cleared away when her adviser, James Ashby, whispered a couple of words into her ear and she turned to the camera with a look of a woman whose point had been proved. Ive just been told theres a terrorist attack thats just happened in Melbourne, she said, before venting her fury on Muslims. People dont look right. That they are not going to assimilate into our society. How they have different ideology, different beliefs, dont abide by our laws, our culture, our way of life. Dont let them in! Make this country safe for its future generations! But there was no terrorist link. The accused driver is from a Greek-Australian family. Hansons words were deplored on television that night as hasty and clumsy and hard. But no one said bluntly what she was up to: race-baiting.
Shes no fool, but its not a big intelligence. Shes learnt hard lessons along the way that make her a more formidable politician now than she was in the late 1990s. But only a prime minister desperate for her Senate votes would say of One Nation as Malcolm Turnbull has: It is not a single issue party or a single personality party. Hes dead wrong on both counts. Hanson is what shes always been: a white woman speaking for old white Australia. She hasnt changed. Nor has her party. But Australia has: we have come to accommodate her. When the Member for Oxley appeared in Canberra twenty years ago, the headlines were tough:
RACIST JIBES NO STUMBLING BLOCK
RACISM THE WORST PART OF ELECTION
RACISM IN POLITICS
RACISM THE UGLY EXPRESSION OF HUMANITYS TRIBAL URGE
HANSON STANDS BY RACE VIEWS
We dont see such headlines now. Back in those days she was seen as an aberration. Not anymore. A great part of her allure then was the figure she cut before angry crowds: a slight woman, often rattled, finding the courage to speak her mind in the face of hostile demonstrations. The angry crowds have gone. These days she seems hardly even a surprise. She was such big news in Asia the first time around that the Foreign Press Association declared her the most famous Australian in the world. These days she makes no headlines offshore. In the late 1990s she had a life expectancy on the national stage of no more than a couple of years. This time shes won a place in the Senate for six and brought a knot of senators with her. Old enemies are now all smiles. Tony Abbott calls her a voice of responsibility. Forgotten these days are the words of Liberal grandees led by Malcolm Fraser, who denounced her at her debut:
