Pauline Hanson’s rise cannot be countered by facts, logic or clever campaign tactics alone, because One Nation’s appeal is rooted in disgust, alienation and a belief that mainstream politics no longer listens.
Pauline Hanson is a handful for all the politicians opposing her, and not one of her rival political leaders has her measure in debate. Particularly when she is addressing her own constituents, regularly increasing in number as they desert other parties. She has almost no conventional rhetorical skills or tricks. She does not assemble her arguments in any sort of logical order. Written versions of her speeches rarely read well, and they lack any sort of metre or cadence or forensic arguments, and many of her statements show the limitations of her education.
Yet she cuts through in a way that her rivals do not. Many an opponent has sat down comfortably thinking he or she has demolished her arguments, diminished confidence in her understanding of facts and events, and undermined her appeals to prejudice and emotion. Then they have come to see that Hanson’s arguments have been retained in the minds of those disposed to hear them, and that little said by way of rebuttal has made much impression on the listeners.
It is simply too easy to say that she manipulates facts, and that her primary appeals are to feelings, alienation and complaint that those in control are not listening and do not care. It’s all very well to assert that she deals in grievance and catalogues of events and slights that resonate, even as she presents no solutions to the problems involved. It is easy enough to point to contradictions in her statements, or to a political record that does not suggest any real empathy with working class Australians, or any instinct for practical solutions to problems of the cost of living, access to the housing market, or services from government.
Just as easy to see that the foundations of her pitch to her people involve crude racism, attacks on “alien” creeds and demonisation of underprivileged groups.
Other politicians, of the left or right, have come to grief wading in this foetid swamp, but Hanson has not. Indeed, one of her current selling points is the consistency with which she has held her most repellent views for the past 30 years in public life.
Hanson is cutting through in ways that Albo and Taylor are not
Just how much her supporters adopt her foundational prejudices and views, and her calls for stringent cuts to immigration, is hard to say. Many of them seem to accept her critique in principle without feeling committed to particular policy prescriptions or simplistic solutions. That does not prevent their considering that Pauline Hanson speaks to them and for them in ways that other professional politicians do not.
A part of the reason, of course, is that they accept the Hanson message that politics has become a scam, with politicians on all sides mostly in it for themselves rather than for ordinary decent white Australians. Better than most she reflects disillusion with the character of most politicians, and the fact that politics and current ideas of democratic government do not seem to work effectively to produce economic or social change.
Her message is not only about grievance and alienation. It also involves insecurity about economic and social circumstances, a fear that people have less control over their lives, and a belief that government is becoming more intrusive and bossy. This is with an array of woke legislation designed to protect self-identified minorities from alleged discrimination, and with government measures seeming to give particular groups rights and privileges not available to other Australians.
This suspicion cannot be dispelled by facts or logic, since it is at heart a “feeling” that is sincerely held, even if it is nonsense.
Many of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation followers have been invited to see themselves as strangers in their own land. Once they had in common a monoculture based on white skins and European roots; now they feel less comfortable in a multicultural society in which Australians whose parents were born abroad assert full rights to define what is Australian, and to include themselves as authentic representatives of the national community. Surely they could be more humble. More grateful. Less assertive. Especially in languages other than English. Ever aware that the original inhabitants – which is to say the European settler from 1788 – have or ought to have the front-row seats.
But the pitch has been refined beyond being a simple anti-immigrant stand. It also caters to opinion among some migrants that the drawbridge should now go up to prevent or restrict further entry, sometimes even from their own country or ethnicity. It’s apparently a form of the Not in My Own Backyard syndrome, where people who get to live in comfortable locations, often after economic struggle, embark first on restricting access to their own suburb, to protect their land values. The set also includes relatively recent migrant groups who have assimilated or integrated here in Australia, but who fear that the next wave of immigrants is less likely to be peaceable, or to fit in. One way or the other, Pauline Hanson has a considerable following among immigrant groups (just as Donald Trump enjoyed support from Latino groups, the focus of his ICE deportation efforts.) Those who had secured their positions were not as keen that succeeding waves should do so.
It’s not about the logic but about the feeling and the disgust at the failures of our leaders
Those who fear that Hanson is attracting more support should not be thinking of arguments to rationally persuade that immigration is a good thing, or that discrimination against Muslims would be wrong. It’s not a matter of reason. It’s a matter of feelings.
Likewise, it is by no means clear that potential One Nation supporters will desert the movement simply because serious and scary genuine extremists, such as Neo-Nazi groups become enthusiastic supporters of the deportation of non-Europeans, or anti-semitic pogroms. Such a development, which is happening already, ought to be making the more reasonable One Nation supporters hesitate. But if the support or intention to vote One Nation is seen as a measure of disgust at the present system, rather than as an endorsement of a particular platform, the syllogism is less clear.
There are any number of reasons why voters have become turned off by conventional politics. The trend has been about for most of this century, with few and fewer voters giving their first preferences either to Labor or the coalition. Many are voting from specific disappointment at their old party – at the squeezing out of moderate Liberals, for example, or at Labor’s multiple betrayals on AUKUS, refugees and climate change.
But a more general disappointment, or anger, can also be at play. Witness, for example, the multiple changes of leadership in the mainstream parties, and the continuing ideological faction fighting about policy. Voters may, or may not, have strong views on some of these fluctuating policies, but many will also be upset at the mere lack of unity.
The Bob Hawke argument – that a party which cannot govern itself cannot be trusted to govern the country – still applies. Parties like One Nation, as much as the Greens and the Teals and community independents, benefit from a general feeling that the parties of the mainstream are divided internally as well as externally. In some such cases, voters will not be judging by the merits of particular policies as such as by the open fighting, leaking, sabotage and preselection shenanigans.
There will be state and territory elections in most jurisdictions before a federal election is due, but it should not be assumed that One Nation will have exhausted its energy, or its resources, or its followers’ enthusiasm at state level contests. One Nation’s profile is on national policies, particularly on immigration, even if it can be accused, for the moment at least, of lacking a comprehensive platform for government. And while Hanson attacks both sides of the mainstream, (drawing most of her support from disillusioned coalition voters), it is quite clear that Hanson is, first and foremost, opposed to the Labor Party, and its broad collectivist policies and traditions. She was a small businesswoman, and a Liberal Party candidate when she first became nationally known. Her attacks on Anthony Albanese are far more personal and bitter than her criticisms of leading Liberals or National Party members.
As Anthony Albanese and other Labor figures are forever pointing out, Hanson’s broad instincts on social and economic matters are deeply conservative and rarely focused on incremental improvements in the lives of the constituency she claims as her own. Perhaps she believes in trickle-down theory, or in the educative value of unrelenting hard work. But she has rarely manifested much interest in health care, in education, vocational or higher education, or in social welfare generally.
Albo needs humility and new respect for government in public
Merely demonstrating the contradictions in Hanson’s policies, or pointing out her voting record, when she can be bothered to attend parliament, will not damage her stature among her followers.
To suggest that it could is to imagine that One Nation support is primarily a preference for measured and promulgated policies rather than a sign of anger and frustration at the general political system, the main parties on offer, the calibre of leaders and the fact that neither politics nor public administration is doing much to make the lives of ordinary Australians more comfortable or more predictable.
Disgust is the word being used. Disgust at the coalition – once the source of most of the votes that are now going One Nation’s way. Disgust at Labor. That’s not necessarily because it is seen as too radical; it could be as much because it is not radical enough. Voters yearn for action. The times, they think, demand it. Bold action if necessary. They are as contemptuous of mealy-mouthed half-hearted action as they are of inaction, indecision or failures even to come to some consensus as to what sort of action is best.
On paper, it could be said that Albanese and Angus Taylor have two years to work up good campaigning tactics and slogans against Pauline Hanson. A lot of things can happen before then. The mere fact that opinion polls are shouting about One Nation’s progress now does not mean that the sentiment will persist, or that the circumstances of 2028 will be advantageous for Hanson.
Against that is the fact of frequent state level elections. If One Nation does well there – and it will – Labor at all levels will be coping with it throughout the period, and, probably, be in perpetual campaign mode. Old hands will remember, of course, that during Hanson’s First Coming towards the end of the 1990s, she did well in Queensland, but her party soon collapsed over personality issues, party discipline, and the lack of a coherent agenda. Federal Labor cannot be certain that this will be the outcome of any interim success during this Second Coming. But they can expect opportunities to undermine her movement.
I very much doubt that Hanson will be destroyed by a sequence of reasonable-sounding arguments, drafted in political science departments, explaining why voters should not give up hope for the mainstream parties or their capacity to make effective change. I doubt that the sense that political parties are not listening to ordinary voters will disappear because of a clever advertising campaign, bipartisan or not. Nor will this apathy, alienation and despair subside simply because the inexorable logic of Albanese, or the limitless charisma of Angus Taylor will inspire hope and confidence again.
If the parties want to be trusted again, and to be the emblem of popular hopes and fears, they will have to do things. And they will have to consult in advance. Foster a debate. Have arguments by which ordinary voters, as opposed to the insiders and the interest groups, know what is at issue and what is at stake. Give some sign of listening to the consultation. Making the politics matter, in short.
The political class and the insider class have brought politics to its low ebb by being too impatient with any idea of public involvement, public consultation and the public’s right to know. If they are unwilling to change, Pauline Hanson may be the least they have to fear.
Republished from The Canberra Times
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.