Queen Of The Red-Necks

AUSTRALIA'S political landscape changed fundamentally this month with a stunning electoral performance in northern Queensland by the anti-immigrant One Nation party led by former barmaid and fish-and-chip shop owner Pauline Hanson. Nearly one in four Queensland voters opted for the flame-haired Hanson, who has become a media fixation and spokesperson for a disenchanted electorate in Australia's small towns, hard hit by economic globalisation and alienated by the increasingly cosmopolitan culture of the big cities.

바카라 웹사이트Hanson had been dismissed as a one-term aberration after her surprise election win to Federal Parliament in 1996. Even more so after she recorded a video message last November to be used in case of her assassination. But in the Queensland election, her array of novice politicians and policies such as support for gun ownership produced a 23 per cent first preference vote, which was turned into 11 seats in the 89-member state parliament when second preferences drifted her way from the conservative Liberal-National coalition which rules in Canberra.

바카라 웹사이트Queensland has always been markedly more conservative than the southeastern states where Australia's population is concentrated. But subsequent opinion polls have shown One Nation favoured by 12 per cent of the electorate nationwide. Not enough to win seats in the lower house of Parliament perhaps, but enough to deliver a sizeable block of seats in the upper house, the Senate, and probably hold the balance of power and effective veto over key legislation.

The right-wing 'shock jocks' who dominate radio talk shows are cheering. Migrant groups, especially Asians, are braced for a further upsurge in ethnic slurs and attacks that they say Hanson is making "respectable". So what is the appeal of Hanson? Strangely, it is partly sex appeal. She was recently voted among the world's 100 sexiest women (only just, she was number 100) by FHM, one of the rash of new "bloke" magazines here. Always heavily made up, she exudes a kind of feral sexuality that apparently turns on her middle-aged, predominately red-necked following.

Hanson has been compared to Evita, Ginger Spice, a Kabuki mask and even the late Princess Diana. A twice-divorced single mother from an Anglo-Irish working-class background, she has a mix of toughness and vulnerability. She also dresses immaculately, a little loudly but not too expensively (to appeal to female voters). Hanson is no longer a "battler" herself and has amassed a small personal fortune, including a $500,000 rural property in Queensland.

The party itself—and Hanson's campaigns have been run by a succession of right-wing Svengali-like figures—has undergone several transformations since its inception last year as a political force. Clearly it taps a growing disillusionment with Australia's mainstream political parties. Its economic policies would be approved by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, translated to an Indian setting. One Nation is against foreign money, foreigners, foreign symbols, foreign brandnames, and imports. In the Queensland campaign it proposed a new bank to give farmers loans at 2 per cent interest.

The party also appeals to conspiracy theories about Aborigines, Asians, and urban elites manipulating government policies to divert revenues away from "ordinary" people. The anti-Asian stance seems perverse in a state that has prospered by selling its coal and sugar to Asia and attracting huge numbers of Asian tourists to its beach and reef resorts. Yet the big resource-based industries have been shedding labour, and the smaller and less scenic towns have experienced high unemployment rates.

HANSON'S rise has coincided with and probably increased slander and attacks against migrants, including the Indian-born community, of whom there are about 6,000 in Queensland (out of 78,000 in Australia). Says Fijian-born Uday Singh, who works as a surveyor with the Queensland state government and has lived in Australia for 17 years: "One Nation is anti-Asian, anti-this and anti-that, things that appeal to simple country people. One can see the difference in the city. It is more cosmopolitan and the attitude there is quite different."

바카라 웹사이트In Sydney, Pawan Luthra, editor Indian Link, sees the Indian community as very concerned by the rise of One Nation, because so many have migrated in the past five years. Says he: "New migrants are more vulnerable to racial attacks; they use public transport more and wear Indian clothes. There were verbal and physical attacks when One Nation burst on the scene, there is a new vulnerability. Prime minister John Howard should have moved in quicker. He's lost a lot of electoral supporters with his fostering of One Nation and his new immigration policies—for example, making it difficult for elderly parents to join their children here—creates new problems."

바카라 웹사이트Interestingly, Nina Badwa, editor of The Indian Down Under, feels that Indians have so far not been targeted as much as "Oriental" migrants: "We are on the periphery. Whatever you think of Hanson, she does represent a spectrum of people who are unhappy. We just have to stick it out."

Academic Jagdish Raj, president of Brisbane's Hindu Mandal Association, agrees: "We Indians are not terribly happy about the One Nation party. I studied at London University in the early '60s and saw what happened there with Enoch Powell. It is the same here now. More trouble came with the arrival of the Vietnamese and the number of Asians visibly increased. There are relatively few Indians and most are professional, so we haven't had much trouble."

Perhaps on account of this, there are even Australians of Indian descent inclined to sympathise with Pauline Hanson. One of Brisbane's 800 or so Sikhs, a woman whose parents came out at the Partition in 1947, refused to give her name but said: "Half of what she says is fair, the other half is not. She's fair on Abos (slang for Aborigines)...they should work like everyone else. They are the trouble-makers around here. It's the kids, they are car thieves and graffiti the walls. They won't work. The white kids don't work either, they wander the streets. On gun laws I agree with Hanson. Everyone should have one. If someone comes with a gun to shoot you, you've got to be able to shoot them back."

바카라 웹사이트Still, she didn't vote for Hanson: "I don't think she knows much. She wouldn't run the country. She's not fair on Asians. Asians want to work, we've got a good reputation." But, given Hanson's growing appeal, does the silent majority in Australia agree?