>I don't know. I can't help thinking this is all very funny. As Hanson's
>handler David Etteridge was a paranoid nutter, he decided to set up the
>party so that all members except himself, Hanson and David Oldfield could be
>summarily expelled. This essentially meant that under Australian law the
>party consisted of precisely three people. It may be a technicality, but it
>is one that stems directly from the attempt to organize a fascist party
>under conditions of liberal democracy. That and stupidity.
All true, its so ironic on so many levels. The sentence seems to have a satisfying element of karma.
>But while it really is fitting to see them in jail, I think this is a flawed
>judicial victory that obscures a much more profound political loss. Hanson's
>party might have self-destructed, but a very large part of the reason for
>that is that the mainstream rightwing parties absorbed her anti-immigration
>agenda. Or more precisely: they chanelled the frustrations she had
>articulated into the manageable project of hating refugees. Ditto with
>Aboriginal relations and welfare measures.
Yes, that's one of the ironies too. All those refugees locked up for years in remote immigration detention centres can hardly be expected to spare much sympathy for Hanson's plight. I loved Latham's quip that she had "...spent the NSW election campaigning for tougher prison sentences, now she's got one." Latham's always good for one-liner, maybe he ought to start a new political party, the One Liner party, try to pick up a few donkey votes?
But the last thing we need in this country is a right-wing martyr. I prefer the my martyrs dead and preferably red in politics. Red of hair doesn't cut it for me. Hanson is not fit company for Ned Kelly.
>Pauline Hanson is a racist and her party was packed with raving nazis, but
>their rhetoric thrived because she asked questions that no one had the guts
>to ask (I am paraphrasing the average Hansonite here).
Not just them. There's an element of truth to it.
> There is an element
>of truth to that, though she then proceeded to give perfectly insane
>answers.
There's more than an element of truth to that.
> Wondering where the jobs had gone and blaming that on migrants is
>an improvement on the bs spin about the miracles of neoliberalism and how
>there are so many jobs around. Or at least, that is definitely how it played
>out in the country, where economic conditions are in fact dismal and there
>really are no jobs.
Plus, there was the gun laws. That really didn't go down well in the bush and although she was a bit slow, she eventually capitalised on it.
>In the end we got the worst possible outcome short of One Nation actually
>taking root. The substrate of justified, oppositional frustration of
>Hansonism has been totally brushed aside and left to fester and fret about
>Moslems, the insane xenophobic aspect has become government policy, and to
>top it all, we get this dodgy law case locking her away. Whatever the
>structure of her party she did command a sixth of the vote. Those people
>haven't changed their minds and they won't change their minds because of
>this.
I worry that people who would never support her before, might just do so now. The belief that she is a political prisoner is already taking root. The belief that she was persecuted in the courts to 'get her out of the way" is something you can expect to hear a lot more of. I'm already hearing it, from unexpected quarters. I don't like what I'm hearing.
This is extremely dangerous. The judge who sentenced her is obviously either a complete fool, or a One Nation sympathiser. (Hey, we might need our own conspiracy theories, don't laugh, pass it on.)
>It is interesting that the legal case against her was supposed to be
>bankrolled by Tony Abbott, the Liberal federal minister for busting unions,
>who more than anyone in the government approaches Hansonesque levels of
>insane hatred. He was the figure chosen to revive the sagging liberal party
>in Queensland, touring the joint pronouncing that really, the only hope of
>having vile hatred made into policy was voting for his party. Whilst doing
>this he helped a disaffected One Nation MP to file a suit against Hanson,
>organized lawyers and then promised he would never go wanting for money
>during the legal action... Now that the case is over and the guy who moved
>it is bankrupt, Abbott refuses to cough up a cent and denies ever having
>made assurances...
As you would expect. It would be extremely dangerous for the Liberal party to get tainted with the smell of being behind the persecution of Pauline Hanson. All of John Howard's political gains from backing her agenda would go down the tube.
Fortunately for him, she was prosecuted in Queensland, a Labor state.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas