> Is Hansonism finished?
By Peter Boyle
The sudden resignation of a Queensland MP is the latest of a
string of setbacks for the far-right Pauline Hanson's One Nation,
but it is too early to write off this party.
Ever since the mid-1970s, the traditional ruling parties, Labor,
Liberal and National, have been steadily losing public support
(see graph). In the last federal election, 20% of the vote went
to "minor" parties, but nearly half of these went to One Nation.
While One Nation took only 9.3% of the total primary vote on
October 3, that was the third largest primary vote, beating the
Nationals and beating even the combined Democrat and Green vote.
While not as spectacular as the 25% it won in the June 13
Queensland election, which gave the new party 11 MPs, it was
still a significant result.
One Nation has only one senator, Heather Hill, to show for its
nearly 1 million primary votes in the federal election, but this
says more about the unrepresentativeness of the electoral system
than anything else.
While One Nation's
vote was largely
in rural
Queensland, NSW
and WA, it still
won significant
support in regional cities and the outer suburban fringe of some
of the big cities.
All this after Hanson virtually sank One Nation's federal
campaign with her 2% flat tax plan and her proposal to whittle
down Medicare to cover just the poorest, after the big business
media pronounced One Nation finished and after One Nation banned
the media from its events on the eve of the election!
Hanson lost the seat of Blair after preferences were distributed,
but she obtained the biggest primary vote in that electorate,
36.8%.
Labor and Coalition leaders declared One Nation defeated after
Hanson lost her seat, but this is clearly premature. Hanson is
reported to be in a post-election depression and there are
rumblings of internal divisions, but One Nation could regroup for
the NSW elections in March.
One Nation received more than a quarter of a million votes in NSW
on October 3, 8.9%. If this vote holds, One Nation will win at
least two upper house seats.
But One Nation could improve its vote in NSW. For a start, it has
received $2.9 million in federal electoral funding, and it could
still receive another half a million for its Queensland election
vote.
In addition, the Carr Labor government is setting the scene for a
"law and order" campaign with an attack on "ethnic youth gangs"
in Sydney's south-western suburbs. The racist hysteria around
this issue, being whipped up by the state's Labor and Coalition
politicians and the media, sets a favourable climate for One
Nation. Hanson promises a comeback in the November 21 Newcastle
by-election.
Even if One Nation misses all these opportunities and/or implodes
because of internal contradictions, the politics of Hansonism
(i.e. racist, right-wing populism) will remain a significant
feature of politics in the next period.
At the very least, it will continue in the form of a further
shift to the right by the National Party, whose vote was whittled
down to a post-1919 low of 5.5% on October 3.
The far right's dramatic electoral resurgence is directly related
to the growing public resentment of the cutbacks, privatisation
and job destruction that have been implemented by both Coalition
and Labor governments since the mid-1970s. As we roll into the
next recession, and unemployment rises even higher, the number of
people who will be seduced by far-right populism will grow larger
if the organised working class is unable to win the confidence of
all the victims of the capitalist crisis.
The bureaucrats and the ALP politicians are driving people into
the arms of One Nation. We saw this clearly in the federal
election when the union movement compounded the crime of doing
the dirty on workers for the last Labor government (through the
ACTU-ALP Accord) by throwing their weight and money simply into a
campaign for votes for Labor. Even the most militant union
leaderships did this.
This allowed Labor to get through the campaign without promising
to repeal Howard's anti-union Workplace Relations Act, without
promising to reverse the massive public sector job cuts, without
challenging work for the dole, the attacks on welfare and similar
cuts.
It also gave the Coalition the confidence to propose a second
wave of anti-union laws that will further cut back the right to
strike.
Economic insecurity and unemployment are the key issues around
which One Nation is winning considerable working-class support.
While the ACTU leaders, Labor and Coalition politicians pay lip
service to the ample evidence that immigrants don't cost jobs,
they still reinforce the scapegoating of recent migrants by
insisting on restrictive immigration policies, supposedly to take
into account the "difficult economic times".
The flip side is that the unions haven't seriously campaigned
against unemployment since the 1970s even though unemployment has
ratcheted up through the last two economic cycles. The 35-hour
week demand is on the ACTU's policy book, but the average working
week has crept up to 41 hours.
Racist scapegoating has a long and shameful history in the
Australian labour movement, and very little has been done from
these quarters to uproot it. (Indeed, some unions have adapted to
racist prejudices within the working class. They've started
reporting workers to the immigration authorities simply on
unconfirmed suspicions that they may be illegal immigrants, based
on their Asian appearance.)
What little anti-racist campaigning has been done by the unions
has amounted to falling in behind the most conservative critics
of Hanson with general appeals for tolerance.
There has been no strong union opposition to the racist policies
implemented by the Howard government and its Labor predecessor.
Both Coalition and Labor federal governments have been allowed to
get away with whittling back the minimal native title belatedly
recognised by the High Court and discriminatory cuts to the
welfare rights of new immigrants. Refugees have been treated like
criminals, stripped of legal rights and kept for years in
detention.
Hansonism won't be defeated until the organised working class
campaigns seriously and independently against racism and in
defence of its own class interests.
[Peter Boyle is a national executive member of the Democratic
Socialist Party. This is article is based on a report to the
October 17-18 DSP national committee meeting.]
[Article from Green Left Weekly #340]
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