And the beat goes on
Ten years after her maiden speech, Pauline Hanson is gone and One Nation is spent. But many of her policies have been absorbed by John Howard, writes Mike Steketee
Dancing queen: Pauline Hanson appeared on the television series Dancing With the Stars in 2004 |
ROSA Lee Long is Australia's last remaining MP representing One Nation but the party label hardly matters to her. While other members of the Queensland Parliament elected under Pauline Hanson's banner have long since become independents, former grazier Lee Long says: "I really could see no reason to change. If I changed to become an independent, I would not be doing anything different."
Hanson has not been up to her far north Queensland electorate of Tablelands to lend support. "I'm not using Pauline at all," says Lee Long. "No reason in particular, but she is not involved in the party any more. I am just campaigning on local issues."
Three other One Nation candidates are running in tomorrow's state election but Lee Long is the only one with a serious chance of winning. If she does, it will be mainly because of the reputation she has carved out as a local member, rather than the party she represents. It is a world away from the 1998 election, when 11 of the party's 79 candidates won seats, marking the sudden arrival of Hanson as a politician with clout.
Lee Long argues bravely that One Nation has a future "because the issues are still there. We need people like myself to keep the bastards honest." That may be effective campaign rhetoric, even if borrowed from the recently departed Democrats leader Don Chipp. But it does not quite match reality.
Sunday marks 10 years since Hanson's maiden speech in federal parliament. It was an event that changed the course of politics and redefined the nation. Leaving aside the splits and scandals that plagued the party and eroded its credibility, the main reason One Nation has lost influence is that John Howard listened very closely to what it was saying and acted on much of what he heard.
As for Hanson, she looks back at the past 10 years as having given her "some of the highest points in my lifetime and certainly the lowest". On the latter score, she includes being jailed for electoral fraud before the conviction was overturned and "copping a lot of flak for standing up for what I believe in".
Six months after her election, Hanson rose to her feet in an almost empty House of Representatives. The next day, her speech attracted modest coverage, mainly in the tabloid newspapers. What she called her "commonsense" views certainly were different from the average backbencher's contribution. It was not until radio talkback switchboards lit up the next day that it became obvious this person who said she was "only a fish and chip shop lady" had struck a chord.
Hanson said yesterday: "The maiden speech certainly stopped everyone in their tracks. Australians kept coming up to me and saying, 'Thank goodness someone is saying what I am thinking.' Both (Coalition and Labor) governments ... were listening too much to the minorities: the Greens and radical groups. They took us for granted."
The speech is best remembered for her declaration that Australia was in danger of being swamped by Asians. But a few sentences further on, after complaining that Asians formed ghettoes and did not assimilate, she expressed a view that acquired a certain resonance. "Of course I will be called a racist, but if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country," she said.
Five years later, after he had stopped the Tampa with its cargo of boatpeople from landing in Australia, Howard raised the rafters at his election campaign launch by declaring: "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come." Coincidence? Perhaps. But it represented a certain meeting of minds.
There was no issue that cut as much ground from underneath Hanson as Howard's tough stand on asylum-seekers. In 1998, Hanson announced One Nation's policy of "temporary refuge for those who meet the UN definition of a refugee, with repatriation when the situation resolves". Philip Ruddock, who was immigration minister at the time, condemned One Nation's approach as being "highly unconscionable in a way that most thinking people would clearly reject". Temporary entry would mean "that people would never know whether they would be able to remain here. There would be uncertainty, particularly in terms of attention given to learning English, (and) in addressing the torture and trauma so they healed from some of the tremendous physical and psychological wounds they have suffered."
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By the following year Ruddock had changed his mind, introducing three-year temporary protection visas for refugees coming by boat. Not only did they create the uncertainty he complained about but they imposed harsh conditions, preventing spouses and children from joining refugees in Australia and denying access to English language programs.
The issue on which Hanson spent most time in her maiden speech was the one she said had largely won her the election: her claim of privileged treatment of Aborigines. It was this criticism in the heat of the election campaign that provoked the Liberal Party to disendorse Hanson, giving her a great deal of free publicity. She won with a swing of more than 18 per cent, the largest in the nation.
"Along with millions of Australians, I am 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 Aborigines are the most disadvantaged people in Australia."
She called for equality for all Australians, including through the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, an elected indigenous body. Howard challenged Hanson on her view, saying Aborigines were indeed the most disadvantaged group. But he acted on Hanson's specific complaints.
One of them, made before her maiden speech, was that Aboriginal students whose parents had income above $25,000 a year received more in Abstudy payments than other students in the same situation received from Austudy. The 1997 federal budget applied an income test to Abstudy, largely eliminating these differences. This was the main component of $39million in savings over four years on Abstudy. At the same time the Government doubled the Austudy payment for families who sent two or more children away for tertiary study.
It took longer to abolish ATSIC, and it may have survived had its leaders not done so much to bring about their own undoing. But Howard grabbed the opportunity when it arose. He never liked the idea of a separate elected indigenous body: it offended his idea of "one nation", a phrase he used to use before it was appropriated by Hanson.
Hanson did not get her way on everything. She argued foreign aid should be abolished. Instead, the Government cut it heavily in its first two budgets and its spending still ranks well down the list of developed countries.
Hanson called for a complete halt to immigration in the short term. The Howard Government did cut the intake significantly in the early years, but with economic prosperity reducing concerns about immigrants taking jobs, it has since been increasing. Multiculturalism should be abolished as well, said Hanson. Howard is no fan of the policy and avoided using the word for years. But he has redefined it in his own terms and retains multicultural affairs as part of Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone's responsibilities.
The Government's response to Hanson was not simply a case of dancing to her tune. Her views, though sometimes crudely expressed, were often not far from Howard's thinking. LaTrobe University political scientist Judith Brett says Hanson's legacy may be that she created space for Howard to reposition himself politically: "Howard likes the image of balance and taking the middle path. By her taking an extreme position, that legitimates him shifting the middle to the right."
In one sense, Howard's response seemed like an overreaction. Although One Nation gained almost 937,000 votes, or 8.4 per cent of the total, in the 1998 federal election, it never looked like becoming a mainstream party. Not only was its organisation a shambles but it attracted fringe dwellers from the loony Right.
Queensland University of Technology political scientist Clive Bean says the Howard Government's response to Hanson was in the tradition of major parties adapting to changing circumstances and "mopping up" support leaking to minor parties. He sees this as a significant factor in the demise of One Nation.
Hanson agrees. "Howard was very smart," she says. "He didn't come out and have a go at me like everyone else because he saw the number of votes I received at the ballot box. There are a lot of things they have actually picked up, which I am pleased about." But it still grates with her that, where she was demonised, Howard goes from strength to strength. "They called me a racist for calling for equality (between Aborigines and whites). But that is exactly what Howard has done."
Perhaps sympathy over her jailing and her stint as a celebrity dancer have softened Hanson's image. Hanson is working on her autobiography, to be published next March. Her life in politics, she says, is just part of it. But she remains concerned about issues such as allowing black South Africans to immigrate, even though "these people offer nothing to this country and they are going to be a burden on this society". As for her old party, "there is no leadership whatsoever". However, she adds: "I tell you this, if push comes to shove, I will bloody well stand up and have my say. The number of people who say 'you should be back in it' ... But at the moment I'm enjoying my life where it is going."
There is irony that the late husband of the last surviving One Nation MP was Australian-born of Chinese descent. "The Asian people I have met have been some of the nicest and most honest citizens, not to mention the best cooks," Lee Long said in her first speech to the Queensland Parliament in 2001. Perhaps they don't have ghettoes in far north Queensland.
Mike Steketee is The Australian's national affairs editor.