The new far-right coalition
* Australia Australia's far right is increasingly influential. The rise of the racist and xenophobic One Nation party has given the country's small and divided far-right organisations the opportunity to regroup beneath a single banner. The mainstream media treats xenophobic MP Pauline Hanson with kid gloves. Sections of big business are prepared for their own purposes to tolerate an openly racist presence on the political spectrum. And the government is sympathetic to some of the extremists' demands. According to Norm Dixon, there is no longer any clear line between the "ratbag right" and the establishment parties. The election of Pauline Hanson as independent member for the traditionally safe Labor seat of Oxley, in Queensland, at the last federal election was unexpected. Hanson was an unremarkable Liberal candidate until her public expression of anti-Aboriginal racism forced the Liberals' state office to dis-endorse her just before polling day.
Hanson was not dumped for her crudely racist views, which are representative of the local members of the National and Liberal parties, now in government. She was only dropped because she lacked the sense to keep her racist remarks behind closed doors or out of earshot of reporters.
Despite her "dis-endorsement," Hanson was supported by the local Liberal machine. Posters proclaiming Hanson as "Liberal for Oxley" plastered the electorate.
After her victory, Hanson appointed members of the Liberal and National parties to her staff. But far-right groups immediately moved to ally themselves with her. They have had an enormous influence on One Nation's policies and ideology. The far-right moves in immediately...
Within days of the election, Australia First leader Graeme Campbell dispatched a member of his staff, John Pasquarelli, to join Hanson as press secretary and adviser. *I saw the dingo-like attack from the media," Campbell told the Australian Financial Review. "I thought, hell, this girl needs help."
A former patrol officer in Australia's colonial administration of Papua New Guinea, Pasquarelli approved all Hanson's press statements and wrote her speeches. It was during this time that Hanson stated she 22 International Viewpoint #293 would represent only her non-indigenous constituents, that Australia was being "swamped" by Asians and that Asians were responsible for drugs and crime. Pasquarelli also wrote Hanson's infamous maiden speech, with its ill-informed anti-Aboriginal, anti-Asian tirades and conspiracy theories that echoed the views of another far right group, the Australian League of Rights (ALR). The speech remains Hanson and One
Pasquarelli, who only left the Liberal party earlier this year, phoned Australia First leader Graeme Campbell several times a day. Members of Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI) and Australia First also played an important role in the production of Hanson's book, The Truth, which includes claims that Abongines were cannibals, found babies "delicious"
Australian League of Rights leader Eric Butler announced in October that his group would give Hanson "all possible support. The league financed the printing and distribution of tens of thousands of copies of Hanson's maiden speech.
Other far-right forces also threw their lot in with Hanson. The Queensland-based Confederate Action Party (CAP) quickly formed Pauline Hanson Support Movements and is now believed to have dissolved into One Nation. Bruce Whiteside, who in the 1980s stood as a CAP candidate on an anti-Japanese investment platform, launched a very successful support movement on the Gold Coast the day after Hanson's maiden speech in September. The neo-Nazi bully boys of National Action have also pledged their
NEXT? allegiance to Hanson.
One Nation's organiser in Newcastle and would-be candidate Peter Archer helped organise a tour of Australia by a member of the right-wing militia movement in the US who also had close links with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Hanson has reached out to the disparate strands of the far-right. During the election, Hanson directed her preferences to Victor Robb, a former Queensland state secretary of the openly neo-Nazi National Front. In October, she was scheduled to address'a Melbourne meeting of the Australian Reform Party, led by Sporting Shooters Association leader Ted Drane. In February, she was guest of honour at the launch of Campbell's Australia First, where she was given a standing ovation by a large audience in which members of the ALR and AAFI were ...but is not allowed to take over
Then there was a change of direction, apparently triggered by Hanson's fear that she was losing control of her movement.
Edwin Morris, editor of the right-wing Bundaberg New Australia Times, claims that Hanson had supported his proposal to form an umbrella group to bring all far-right organisations under one banner. "There is only a cigarette paper between each of them in their policies, " Morris said. The plan was to hold meetings in each capital city, culminating in a final gathering in Sydney to launch the united party. Hanson had agreed to attend a meeting in Melbourne but pulled out, instead announcing her intention to form
Pasquarelli was unceremoniously sacked on December 9, after Hanson reportedly found he was constructing a Senate ticket in her name. Given Pasquarelli's links, she rightly suspected that Australia First and AAl, and through them, the ALR, would have benefited most.
Hanson's new right-hand man, David Ettridge, set about bringing the support group branches back under Hanson's control. The One Nation Party is born
Since its formation on April 11, branches of Hanson's new One Nation Party have been closely monitored On April 19, Ettridge warned that if groups like the ALR or the CAP tried to control One Nation, they would
"We have no real interest in affiliations or alliances," Ettridge told the May 3-4 Weekend Australian. "We are the ones that are forging ahead at a great rate of knots and they [the other far-right parties] are the ones who have been running very slowly in the water... We have the Pauline Hanson phenopresident; Peter Murraya, federal vice-president of the National Party and Tasmanian branch president; and Joh Bjelke-Petersen, former NP premier of Queensland.
Flo Bjelke-Petersen, former NP Queensland Senator, told the May 12 Australian that ...so many of [Hanson's] policies are National Party policies but the Nationals can't always implement them because they are in coalition with the Liberals" When in office, both Bjelke-Petersens openly sympathised with the League of Rights).
The Liberal machine in Hanson's Oxley electorate remains loyal to Hanson. The Queensland state Liberals have announced they will direct preferences to Hanson, making her re-election highly likely, and a $25-a-head function for Hanson was organised by the Goondiwindı branch of the
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Not surprisingly, the National Party is very worried. Queensland Premier Rob Borbidge warned that "the Coalition could be devastated by Pauline Hansons from one end of Australia to another," and National Party Senate leader Ron Boswell denounced Hanson and her links to the far right.