Lessons from Hansonism

Where to now for Pauline Hanson?

Oblivion. Although her party (now Pauline’s United Australia Party) is still hanging on, her 2007 comeback has been a bigger failure than her 2004 comeback. The greater mass of her former support has accepted defeat and she is now of little interest to the media.

But there was a grubby episode in our political history which should not be forgotten.

In August 2003 Pauline Hanson and her fundraiser were convicted of electoral fraud and sentenced to three years imprisonment with no chance of parole. They spent 11 weeks in maximum security before there was a successful acquittal hearing forced by a wide public condemnation of the sentence. There had been no fraud.

What can the Pauline Hanson experience teach us?

Hanson was relatively unknown outside her seat of Oxley - and then, after her “they breed like rabbits” speech from the backbench, she was like a light which attracted insects to it. This highly reactionary position was unsustainable. But, it was a warning. We need to be prepared for a more strategic approach from a more politically savvy and better funded person in the future - especially if a terrorist bomb is detonated in this country.

We observed the underhanded behaviour of the major political parties, the exploitative behaviour of the media and the subjective behaviour of the public. The success and failure of Hanson should be studied and the findings made widely available to the nation. Unwittingly, she has conducted for us a potentially very valuable social experiment. We need more than her Untamed and Unashamed version of history.

Xenophobia is the natural state to be in and a change in consciousness is required to step out of it. If there is to be a change in consciousness in a substantial proportion of conservative people, we as a nation cannot afford to let the Hanson experience and the lessons it contains to simply drift out of sight.