If One Nation does poorly in next Saturday's state election, a lot of people around Australia are going to be extremely disappointed. Obviously, they will include Pauline Hanson and her supporters. But they will also include many people and organisations who have been very vocal in denouncing the member for Oxley.
The Pauline Hanson phenomenon has been a godsend to the race relations and human rights industries, together with all the others who love to bag contemporary Australia. By seeming to "prove" that Australia is still a racist country, Hanson's prominence has helped them to weather the chill of Paul Keating's defeat. The member for Oxley is the enemy of their dreams, and they would hate to lose her.
Hanson is not terribly bright, and she seems unwilling to discipline herself for the hard intellectual and parliamentary slog that might make her a more effective champion of her causes. Her arguments are usually muddled, and she frequently gets things wrong. And when talking about non-Europeans she tends to use language that makes it difficult to accept her claims that she is not a racist.
She also suffers from the very hypocrisy and vanity that many of her supporters criticise in other politicians. In The Pauline Hanson Story, her former advisor John Pasquarelli recounts the guidance about love and marriage this supposed champion of family values gave to one of her young female employees: "Use men for their bodies -- get what you can out of them, then give them the flick".
Even allowing for Pasquarelli's resentment at his dismissal, there is enough evidence to suggest a large gap between what Hanson says and what she actually believes about many matters. Pasquarelli also describes how she would spend many hours reading her fan mail, to the detriment of his attempts to give her the crash course in political and policy matters that she so desperately needed.
These faults have simply played into the hands of those she condemns, helping them to protect positions that might otherwise be threatened. As Sydney journalist Paul Sheehan observes in his best-seller, Among the Barbarians: The Dividing of Australia, Hanson's name has become "the standard weapon with which to bludgeon opposition". Rather than opening up debate on important matters, Hanson's interventions usually serve to close it down.
A typical example occurred this week, with her inept and inflammatory comments about the United Nations Draft Declaration on Indigenous Rights. The provisions of this declaration allow for a level of indigenous autonomy, separatism and territorial control that would be quite unacceptable to the great majority of Australians -- probably including Aboriginal Australians -- and harmful to the nation's interests. Nevertheless, the legal implications of a declaration are quite different to those of a treaty, despite what Hanson wrongly claimed.
A little research, using the excellent services of the Parliamentary library, would have uncovered a much more credible and damaging assessment than anything that Hanson herself could produce. In June 1996 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission published a analysis of the declaration by Dr Sarah Pritchard, a legal academic who specialises in indigenous rights.
Dr Pritchard wrote that although Australia would not be required to implement any final document, the declaration would still have an impact that "should not be underestimated" and that "at the national level it will bring about changes in legislation and policy". Furthermore, some of its principles could eventually acquire the status of customary international law and "become binding on states", including those which had not signed the declaration.
Of course, even if the Member for Oxley had done her homework and used less hysterical language, she would still have been condemned. But she might also have triggered debate about the long-term implications of the declaration, as it is an issue which also concerns a number of thoughtful members of Parliament. Instead, she has probably ensured that serious and open discussion about the declaration will be taboo for the foreseeable future, much to the joy of its supporters.
There is one exception to the kiss of death that Pauline Hanson invariably gives to a cause, and it proves the rule about the way in which her opponents have cleverly used her to strengthen their own positions. Pauline Hanson's economic nostrums are remarkably similar to those of Cheryl Kernot, the Australian Democrats, and to sections of the Labor Party.
But these similarities very rarely occasion comment from those who are so active in condemning her views on social and cultural issues. Interviewers from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation do not thrust their microphones in Kim Beazley's face and demand that he denounce Pauline Hanson's statements about foreign ownership and protection for Australian industry.
On the face of it, this is very strange. If it is morally acceptable to encourage suspicion and hostility towards foreign investment and foreign companies, why is it unacceptable to dislike foreigners in general? Economics cannot be isolated from culture and society, and xenophobia in one domain helps to legitimise xenophobia in the others.
Although Hanson may not have the wit to realise it herself, at least she is consistent. Many of her opponents are not. Perhaps they can provide good reasons for the discord between their economic and their social views. But they don't seem to feel any need to do so. This suggests that they have simply used Pauline Hanson as a wonderful stalking-horse to damage John Howard's government, and to protect the interests of the victim industries.
So if you dislike the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the unrepresentative ethnogogues of the multicultural lobby, and the whole motley crew who denigrate Australia for its "racism", next Saturday you will have the opportunity to really stick it to them. Instead of voting for One Nation, as they fervently hope you will, vote for Labor, or the Coalition, or even the Democrats. By placing One Nation last, you will be kicking away a vital crutch for many of the socially destructive interests that Hanson and her party oppose so ineffectively.
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