What's all the fuss about? Hanson got no more or less than she deserved

Her conduct led to Liberal voters in the seat being deprived of a candidate and she was able to take many of their votes, as well as the high profile she had gained by being the candidate, and parlay them into a win. An honourable person would have resigned from the party and then announced that, even though they were on the ballot paper, they did not wish to be elected. Steve Wilson, a candidate at the following state election in Ipswich, did exactly this. Hanson is not an honourable person.

There is also another aspect of fraud to Hanson, and I use the word is the most general and non-criminal sense. While she holds herself out as a saviour to Australians, she in fact has nothing to offer.

Australians have come to recognise this. While the Sunday Mail poll has One Nation's share of the vote at 21 per cent if an election were held tomorrow, an election won't be held tomorrow, and when it is held the percentage will be closer to two per cent than it is to 20 per cent. Australians have woken up to Hanson. She failed in her bid for the New South Wales Legislative Council earlier this year. She did not even score two per cent of the state-wide vote and was beaten by the Shooter's Party.

If Hanson deserves what she has received, why the outcry? It comes down to three major influences. The first is the leniency our Australian tribes accord to one of their own when they face punishment and the disturbing failure of all of us to unite around significant national institutions. Hanson is the face of white disempowerment. Her tribe is uniting around her rather than the judicial system. She has traded on this sort of sectarianism, and it is standing her in good stead again, even though it is destructive of underpinnings of our society like the rule of law.

One can see the mirror image of this when it becomes a rite of passage in some Aboriginal tribal communities to do time, and yet again when important people turn up in Mercs to spruik at the trial of an Alan Bond. The way of Hansonism is the way of the mob, and we should have enough examples of this around the world at the moment to want to avoid it. Which makes the second major influence - sensationalism by the media - even more reprehensible.

There used to be a difference between a tabloid and a broadsheet that went to style and substance, not just the dimensions of the page. Now there appears to be no difference at all. Post-modernism appears to have rotted the guts of good journalism, and what we see on the front page is not an attempt to recreate the truth but the squalling of alternate "discourses" each asserting the virtue of its own case on the basis of the volume of its scream. This has been allied to a quest to bolster the bottom line, not by producing good journalism for which people will pay but producing entertainment that will engage their senses and leave their minds untouched.

It would be easy to indict the Murdoch press alone for this. The Courier-Mail in particular has devoted every front page since her conviction to the story, as well as countless inside stories and analyses. The truth is that the ABC and commercial television, are equally culpable. My criticism is not just the amount of coverage but the lack of balance in it. Mark Oberhardt in the Courier has done a good job of analysing the legal situation but it is his colleague Chris Griffiths who is given the front-page lead, "Please Explain", where he criticises the jail term on grounds of cases that are not in the least comparable.

While the media could have chosen to cover the story on the basis of a salutary lesson and how far the once-mighty can fall, they have instead treated Hanson as though she were royalty and put her accusers on the rack. In this morning's paper we read that, shock horror, Tony Abbott solicited witnesses to give evidence against Hanson, as though he were guilty of a crime. In fact, the story ought to be why it was left up to Abbott to ensure that justice could be done when it was the job of the electoral commission and the police. Where are these investigative pieces?

Of course, this media mania is nothing new. It was the same mania that drove the original bubble in Hanson support to 23 per cent across Queensland, at the same time as the media sanctimoniously condemned Hanson. Hanson's family claims that there was a conspiracy to "hunt their little sister down like a dog". Well, there is a conspiracy but they are the beneficiaries of it. It is the conspiracy to sell papers, page impressions and airtime to consumers so they can carry more advertising and thus enhance corporate bottom lines and viewer statistics any way that the media can. One can only assume it was the same force that drove the recent public outcry over the jailing of Di Fingleton, a woman from the other side of the political spectrum who also spectacularly failed the probity test, yet passed the celebrity one to score front page after front page.

As a result, the third factor comes in to play, which is the inability and unwillingness of politicians to stand up and defend what they know to be right when the public are opposed to it. There has been recent criticism by Murray Gleeson, Chief Justice of the High Court, calling on the Commonwealth Attorney-General to defend the courts against political attack. This matter presents an even more compelling reason for everyone who cares about civilisation, not just Attorneys-General, to come out and defend the process. First and foremost ought to be our politicians. Of these, only Peter Beattie has stood up. Yet Beattie has nothing to lose - One Nation is a problem for the National Party, not him - and he could not resist opportunistically having a shot at Abbott. The rest are running for cover, afraid that they will be the victims of One Nation.

I have always supported Hanson's right to her opinions and the right to a platform where she can express them. If she or her representatives want to write a matching piece for On Line Opinion they are welcome, and it will get equal prominence to mine. At the same time I see her brand of populism as being among the most damaging forces in the country. Not that she is on her own, or that it is only a "right wing" phenomenon. What appals me is that we as a society have become so fixated with our own needs, wishes and desires that we cannot stand aside and consider the common good.

Pauline Hanson can serve as a force for good but only if we use her situation as a mirror to hold up to our own faces and take a hard look at ourselves. At the same time that we are involved in pre-emptive actions around the world whose only justification can be that we are spreading civilisation and liberating peoples, our own grasp of our own cultural identity and why what we do and value is right is shown by this Hanson episode, to be sadly weak. At the moment she and the forces that she exemplifies is only a mote in our eye, but it seems to me to be growing into a log.

Graham Young chaired the Liberal Party preselection council that originally selected Hanson. In 1985 he was also Campaign Director to John Wolfe in the BCC ward of Paddington. John Wolfe is Judge Wolfe's husband.