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Geelong Deanery |
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One Nation or Divided Nation? That is the Question!Since the mid-1980s, the gaps between rich and the poor in Australia have widened dramatically. Unemployment and job insecurity have increased drastically. We have seen most of our manufacturing industry move overseas, and their products returned as imports. In every budget our governments are reducing government spending by sacking armies of public servants, and selling off public utilities like Telstra and the SEC. Why is this so and what does it have to do with the rise of One Nation? Some of it has happened because of technological change. But much of it is due to the adoption by governments around the world of a conservative economic theory known in Australia as ‘economic rationalism’. Put simply, this theory says that governments should not run or protect industries, but should leave their establishment and survival to the decisions of private individuals and companies (the free market). The Hawke, Keating and Howard governments have told us repeatedly that if we do not submit our economy to market competition, nobody will buy our goods and we will become a ‘banana republic’. The problem with such economic reform was that its costs were not shared evenly, and that is where One Nation comes in. The losers in this economic reform are looking for ways of expressing their protest. They quite rightly ask what can be right about an economic system that inflicts misery on so many of its participants. Unfortunately, however, they are tempted in their frustration to opt for simplistic and often selfish solutions to our problems, solutions such as those offered by One Nation. Like right-wing parties of the past, this party exalts the interests and glory of its own group, in this case white Anglo-Celts. Other groups become scapegoats for our economic problems. Money spent on Aborigines or migrants is money ‘stolen’ from the real Australians. Immigration policies are promoted which are thinly disguised reversions to the ‘White Australia’ policies of the past. Unable to find solutions to the real problem of ensuring that transnational corporations pay their share of tax, they grasp at simplistic schemes like their ‘2 per cent cascading system’. And as they win popularity, they attract members from all sorts of extremist groups such as the infamous ‘League of Rights’; Victorian convenor, Ms Robyn Spencer, has acknowledged such links. Many good people with legitimate grievances are attracted to a party that seems to express those grievances, the more so when the party’s critics attack its leader for being an ordinary Australian with a limited education. Every political leader must, however, be judged by their policies. Ms Hanson said on the 7.30 Report in 1996 that she would represent all in her electorate except Aboriginals. This is discrimination by a politician against a group of constituents on the basis of race. Moreover, her Aboriginal policy of assimilation is racist, as is an immigration policy designed to prevent us from being ‘swamped by Asians’. A parliament in which this party held the balance of power would be hostage to policies that are not only simplistic but also racist. A vote for One Nation would be in fact a vote for a divided nation. Michael Leahy |
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