HVK Archives: The perils of pauline
The perils of pauline - The Sunday Telegraph Magazine
Sarah Ferguson
()
6 July 1997
Title: The perils of pauline
Author: Sarah Ferguson<BR>
Publication: The Sunday Telegraph Magazine
Date: July 6, 1997
Australia, says Pauline Hanson, is in danger of being "swamped by Asians",
and she, as leader of the new One Nation Party, is the person to save it.
Sarah Ferguson went with the ex-chip shop owner on a barnstorming tour of
the Sunshine Coast.
"Wake up Austray-ya!" Pauline Hanson's flat, untutored accent cuts through
the stifling atmosphere of the Kawana Waters Community Hall. Outside in
the humid night, a band of chanting protesters has assembled and, as they
begin drumming on the metal doors at the back of the hall, Hanson, founder
of Australia's newest political party, the One Nation Party, goes almost
hoarse as she attempts to drown out the surge of noise. The disturbance
puts Hanson off her stride, but, for her supporters, this artlessness only
increases her charm. This is Queensland, Australia's most conservative
state, known as the "Deep North", and the people here are delighted by
Hanson's lack of political craft. She's a battler, just like them. And
she's peddling a message they're ready to hear.
"Australia is not part of Asia. And I do not want to be Asianised." It's
an applause line and the audience responds, many leaping to their feet,
hooting and howling. "Go you beauty!... We love ya Pauline!" An elderly
man in the front row lifts his hat to the lady on the podium - a political
phenomenon dividing Australia, threatening its relations with Asian
neighbours and drawing back the covers on the suppressed intolerance that
many feel for the country's multicultural dream.
Pauline Hanson's sudden prominence has much to do with timing. In the last
general election, in March 1996, Australia underwent an ideological
transformation. Thirteen years of Labour rule were swept aside in a
landslide victory for the Liberal Party (the Australian equivalent of the
British Conservatives). Paul Keating, Labour's young charismatic leader,
was replaced by John Howard, a veteran politician of avowedly Thatcherite
colours.
Even during the campaign, it was clear that the tenor of Australian
politics had changed. Among other broken taboos, the race debate returned
to the political agenda. Liberal Party polling had highlighted the fact
that a large proportion of the electorate was unhappy with immigration and
Aboriginal policies. Howard cleverly exploited this popular
dissatisfaction by allowing extremist views to go unchecked - while being
careful not to commit himself to any specific policy solutions. His
opponents decried the tactic, fearing that the genie had at last been let
out of the bottle.
Pauline Hanson, then a new Liberal candidate, was the sort of
arch-conservative that Labourites were afraid of - although, within a few
months, she was to prove an arch-embarrassment even to her own party. She
had been selected by the Liberals to contest the seat of Oxley, 1,000
square kilometres of mostly suburban Queensland. But just before the
election, she started writing open letters to the newspapers attacking the
government for their policy of giving preferential treatment to Aborigines,
and the Liberals promptly deselected her. Undaunted, Hanson went on to
fight the Oxley seat as an independent - winning it with the biggest swing
away from Labour in the country. She marked her parliamentary debut with
one of the most controversial speeches in the history of Antipodean
politics, declaring that Australia was "in danger of being swamped by Asians".
Asians have been maligned in Australia ever since the 1850s, when large
numbers of Chinese came over during the gold rush. From then on, the
Chinese, as well as the Japanese and, indeed, all South-East Asians were
caricatured as the "Yellow Peril", threatening to engulf the country from
the north. At the rum of the century, a policy of "white Australia"
designed to exclude Asian and all other coloured immigrants was adopted.
The policy was quietly dropped in the Sixties, but it was not until the end
of the Vietnam War, in 1975, that large numbers of Asians were welcomed
into the country. By 1980, Asians accounted for almost half of all new
settlers; and today Asians comprise about three per cent of the 18
million-strong population.
Although during the past three years both Labour and Liberal parties have
gradually reduced the numbers of immigrants, a belief in multiculturalism
has remained politically sacred. Still, a substantial group of Australians
has watched the changing ethnic make-up of their country with growing
disquiet. For this mostly older generation, the arrival of Pauline Hanson
on the political scene last year offered the possibility of a return to a
cherished Australia of the past. For Hanson herself, these mutinous
nostalgics offered a solid base for a whole new political movement.
And so, in March this year - when pollsters put Hanson's support at between
ten and 25 per cent of eligible voters - the One Nation Party was born. And
ever since she has been barnstorming round the country looking to build on
that early popular pledge. The new party claims to have sent out more than
30,000 membership forms, and plans to put up a candidate for every seat at
the next election. The threat to John Howard, whose Liberal Party was
voted in with a 45-seat majority, is very real. In spite of intense
criticism, Howard initially kept silent about Hanson, apparently assuming
that if he ignored her she would go away. This tactic having failed,
Howard finally took his gloves off and in a recent speech talked of
Hanson's party in the same breath as the Ku Klux Klan.
In person Pauline Hanson does not look like an extremist. From her gold
court shoes to her trademark red hair (the happy proof of her own
Anglo-Celtic origins), she is as neatly turned out as an Avon Lady. Even
from the back of the hall you can make out her overbright lipstick, her
meticulously varnished nails and a leopard-skin motif on her black trouser
suit that indicates a taste for the exotic quite at odds with her public
utterances.
The package in which the Hanson message comes is all-important. Hanson's
credibility is tied up with her femininity. Were she a man, she would not
have enjoyed such success nor received such attention. Her faltering voice
and quizzical, sometimes feline, look suggest a vulnerability that makes
the crowds of demonstrators - the supporters of multiculturalism, after all
- who stake out her rallies, look like the aggressors. Screaming abuse and
threatening her supporters, they help to foster the image of a lone woman
at the centre of turmoil, bravely prepared to tell it like it is no matter
how tough it gets.
On stage at Kawana Waters, Hanson's stilted delivery is slowly improving as
she warms to her theme. She draws her audience into a ritualised call and
response about the migrants who, she says, form ethnic ghettos.
"Do they want our country to become like the places they left?"
"No!" yells the audience.
"Do you?"
"No!"
"Like Indonesia perhaps? Cambodia or Vietnam?"
"No! No!" Even louder.
"How about I-ran or I-raq?"
"No!"
"If we fail," she intones ominously, "all our fears will be realised and
we'll lose our country for ever."
The white, mostly middle-aged audience look up at the podium in admiration:
Hanson is giving voice to their most private thoughts, which years of
political correctness have taught them to suppress. As the mob outside
hurl themselves anew against the cordon of Queensland police, she leans
toward the microphone as though to share a secret. "I tell you," she says,
with a grin, "It's been a hell of a job to come from behind the counter of
a fish and chip shop."
THE FISH AND CHIP SHOP IS ONE OF BRITAIN'S DUBIOUS LEGACIES TO Australia.
In every coastal town, hard by vast Pacific beaches, there is the
Australian version of the chippie. Enter one of these shops and, except
for some barrumundi or golden roughly awaiting the deep-fat fryer, you
could almost be in Margate. So imagine if, almost overnight, the woman in
the grease-spotted apron behind the counter became the most controversial,
the most vilified, the most divisive political figure in the country - and
you have a clue to the Pauline Hanson phenomenon.
Hanson makes frequent reference to those grease spots in her speeches,
asserting thereby her credentials as one of those ordinary, down-to-earth
Australians who can't and won't keep up with the swift pace of change being
forced on them by the enemy, "the elites".
Now 43, she describes herself as "a woman who has had her fair share of
life's knocks". She was brought up in a Brisbane suburb, one of seven
children of descendants of Irish and English immigrants. Her parents, she
says, "worked 106 hours a week for 25 years running a milk bar". As a
child, Pauline helped out in her parents' caf=E9, and, after leaving school
at 15, she found work as a barmaid at the Penthouse night-club in Surfer's
Paradise, a tourist resort on the Gold Coast. Since then she has been
married and divorced twice, producing two children in each of those
marriages, though she is now said to have almost no contact with her two
eldest sons. The divorce settlements gave her the means to speculate in
local real estate, and this in turn enabled her, in 1989, to buy a small
business of her own, which, before she sold it last spring, had become the
most famous fish and chip shop in the southern hemisphere.
I went to meet the former proprietor of Marsden's Seafood Snack Bar at the
Gold Coast bungalow of her private secretary, Barbara Hazelton. Hanson and
her entourage had been at a nearby night-club till four in the morning.
But, after three hours' sleep, Hanson was up and dressed for battle -
jungle-print dress, gold earrings, freshly daubed orange-red lipstick.
Today Prime Minister Howard was to announce a cutback in Asian immigration,
partly in answer to Hanson's growing popularity, and she was working on her
response. Two men in sharp suits hovered near her - Henry and Dave, police
bodyguards, from the VIP protection squad in Canberra. A third bodyguard,
Leanne, was inside helping with the washing-up. These three accompany
Hanson wherever she goes, seven days a week. The Australian Security and
Intelligence Organisation believes Hanson may be subject to an
assassination attempt. Her every rally is attended by a huge deployment of
police, making her the most protected figure in Australian public life.
We set off in two white Holden saloons for the drive north along the
Queensland seaboard to Kawana Waters on the Sunshine Coast, where the rally
is due to begin at 7.30pm. Sandwiched in the back between Hanson and
Leanne, I notice that the car is equipped with extra rear-vision mirrors.
Hanson looks at me sideways, as if uncertain how I got there. "What's all
this about then?" she asks.
Inevitably with Hanson, any conversation settles on the subject of race.
"Look," she says. "First off, I am not a racist, I want equality for all
Australians. It's got nothing to do with skin colour. just tell me, does
an Aborigine have a monopoly on being disadvantaged?"
She folds her hands in her lap and continues: "It's very simple. All
welfare should be needs-based, not colour-based, no special treatment for
anyone. Balance." She says she hasn't got a racist bone in her body, she's
simply "one of the few people brave enough to say what people are really
feeling about the Aborigines". She explains that she didn't have much
experience of Aborigines when she was growing up, but that now she's seen
them in her constituency... "It's a bloody joke. They just sit around all
day, doing nothing, with their hands out. And I've visited communities out
in the Bush. If they're so in tune with the land, why are they so dirty?"
In recent years race has become an increasingly bitter topic of debate in
Australia. Aborigines now represent less than two per cent of the
population, but decades of cripplingly expensive welfare policies have kept
indigenous issues at the top of the agenda. In the past five years two
landmark decisions have been passed in the High Court, giving Aborigines
rights to pursue "native title" claims on huge tracts of the outback.
These rulings have caused consternation in the Bush to the point where
farmers have threatened civil unrest.
"Look at this," says Hanson, reaching down to pull some papers out of her
handbag. She brandishes a map of Australia, three-quarters of which is
shaded black. "This is what Australia's going to look like if we let the
Aborigines do all these land claims. They'll own the country. They say
they're indigenous. Nobody gave me my land, I worked for it. We have to
extinguish all 'native title'."
As Hanson sees it, the whole notion that Australia owes a debt of apology
to the Aborigines is ridiculous. "The majority of Australians don't feel
guilty for what happened." She leans towards the bodyguards in the front
seat: "Isn't that what most people think? Wouldn't you say?"
The convoy makes a detour via Hanson's headquarters in Ipswich, the centre
of her suburban constituency, once earmarked to be Queensland's capital.
Now the butt of jokes as the ugliest town in Australia, Ipswich is in
serious decline. Following the closure of 70 per cent of its mines, mills
and factories, unemployment is high. It was here that Hanson served her
brief political apprenticeship - after a stint pulling pints in a bowls
club, she briefly became a town councillor, before putting her name forward
for Liberal Party selection. And it is the disaffection here that has in
part spawned Hanson's philosophy. The recent migration of Asian groups to
Ipswich's outlying suburbs offers her the perfect model for pinning
unemployment to high immigration.
In the office in Ipswich, Hanson's bodyguards periodically check the peep
hole in the back door to see what is going on outside. Everyone is
understandably nervous, as news has just come through that an explosive
device has been discovered at Hanson's party office in Adelaide.
We leave by the back stairs, and head off again under a heavy downpour. The
next stop is a private strategy meeting over lunch in Noosa. On the face
of it, an unlikely location, Noosa is a small, chic, artistic town that
considers itself far superior to the rest of the developed coast. The
lunch is to be held by local supporter John Cuming and his wife, Verushka
Mezaks, a sculptor, who live in a large, white Moorish pavilion with a
panoramic view over Sunshine Beach. Pacing the pavement in front of the
house, awaiting Pauline Hanson's arrival, is a young man wearing a grey
bomber jacket. He is clearly very nervous. He spots the Sunday Telegraph
photographer, also waiting for Hanson, and runs over, threatening to "sic"
the dogs on him if he doesn't clear off.
This, it transpires, is Brett Hocking, a local plumber, who is the current
favourite on the One Nation Party's candidate list. This evening is his
first rally and he is to give the vote of thanks. As one of the many
rallies being conducted nationwide to bolster the fledgling party, the
success of tonight's meeting is crucial: if Hanson is to have any real
power in Canberra, she knows she must translate her support into votes for
candidates like Brett. Inside the house, a harp recital played on CD
drifts through the rooms. The decor is a mixture of European antiques and
Asian art. Two large black standard poodles - "specially clipped for the
occasion", Verushka tells me - lounge idly in the sitting-room, beneath a
vast glass chandelier.
Lunch is served, and we all filter next door into a small elegant
dining-room -John and Verushka; Pauline Hanson; David Ettridge and David
Oldfield, her two advisers, just arrived from Sydney; Brett, the
plumber-candidate; and me. We are waited on by a tall, blond and
ostentatiously camp young man in shorts called Bob, whose presence Hanson
studiously ignores.
Our host John Cuming is an avuncular, slightly irascible 75-year-old who
sees in Pauline Hanson the only hope of preventing Australia's decline.
For years he has lobbied governments, most recently though an organisation
called Ozstand, on the perils to Australian business of foreign ownership.
Now he hopes to hitch his wagon to her star. He has put his ideas on paper
for her and even set out some script lines in a folder for her to use in
parliament. They agree on the need to protect Australian companies and
make foreign investors pay more tax, to shore up the weakening economy.
"This is a First World country with Third World living conditions," says
Hanson, as she sips a glass of Italian wine.
The Australian economy is certainly not performing as well as it might be.
Having recently emerged from the deepest recession since the depression of
the Thirties, the country was expected to enjoy a much-needed increase in
economic growth, thanks to the policies of the new Liberal government. But
this has yet to materialise. Cuming's bogeyman is the Treasury. "It's the
great Australian Swindle," he says. "The Treasury is keeping us poor so
our country can be taken over. It's the new world order."
The air is thick with paranoia. When someone says a reporter from the
Noosa News is at the front door, there is a generalised panic. Brett is
especially upset: "Who told them, who told them? This meeting's supposed
to be top secret!"
THE KAWANA WATERS COMMUNITY HALL SEEMS FAR REMOVED FROM THE rarified calm
of the Noosa lunch. A crowd of demonstrators, perhaps 200-strong, has
gathered in the drizzle, while the Hanson supporters are ushered into a
holding area, vetted by the police before entry. Scores of young
protesters who have answered an ad in a Brisbane newspaper are disgorging
from coaches, already chanting through megaphones. Meanwhile, another
smaller group has set up a loudspeaker on the back of a truck in the car
park. They play Give Peace a Chance through a PA system. Kim Canty, a white
housewife from Noosa, holds her banner up in the light thrown by the
truck's headlamps. "RACIST MP DON'T SPEAK FOR ME."
Hanson is smuggled in through the back door, into a waiting-room behind the
stage. Staff and members of a local support group pop in to wish her luck.
Out on stage, Brett, the plumber-candidate, pins a poster to the rostrum,
his face red with excitement. It is a blown-up photo of Pauline in regal
pose, wrapped in the Australian flag. The audience is escorted in, then
the doors slam shut.
Whether or not Pauline Hanson will succeed in her bid to deliver a
disenchanted nation from the trendies, the judges, the media and the PC
politicians, remains to be seen. But, even if she dwindles into being the
eccentric member for Oxley, she will have made an indelible impression on
Australian politics. Whenever Australia trumpets the successes of its
multi-ethnic society, there will be "The Hanson Factor" to remind everyone
that the picture is not so rosy as it seems.
Tonight's meeting, anyway, looks set to be pronounced a triumph. As Hanson
brings it to a close, a croaky voice breaks out from the back of the hall,
and sings the first verse of the national anthem. Hanson joins in, and the
audience, suddenly solemn, rise and sing with her: "Australians all let us
rejoice / For we are young and free..."
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