Outrage masks political reality
A HANDSHAKE of goodwill across the dispatch box between the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.
An embrace between a Muslim and a Jew on the floor of the House of Representatives.
And in the Senate, Pauline Hanson – Pauline Hanson! – issuing a denunciation for being “straight from the Goebbels handbook for Nazi Germany”. She added that “we are a multiracial society and I have always advocated you do not have to be white to be Australian”.
Truly, the maiden speech of the former One Nation – now Katter’s Australia Party senator, Fraser Anning, was one for the ages, giving our politicians that warm inner glow that comes from trying to out-do each other in bipartisan outrage.
Leaving aside its discussion of race and migration, Anning’s speech is a strange document, full of suggestions for things that aren’t going to happen.
There will be no return to marketing boards for farmers to sell their produce through.
State governments are not going to re-establish state development banks that would “not be subject to APRA lending guidelines” and “empowered to buy up existing so-called ‘disAs tressed’ loans from banks”. The Bradfield scheme from 1938 with its dreams of turning the rivers around is not going to happen either.
Nor are “microports” going to be constructed “along the Queensland coast every 60 to 80km” to “greatly increase the viability of exports”.
That’s not the stuff that has everyone steamed up, of course.
No, it’s Anning’s praise for the lost Eden of the White Australia policy and his call for a return to a discriminatory immigration policy that has everyone in a lather.
And if Anning had simply called for a White Australia, there would be nothing problematic about the universal denunciation of the entire political media complex, because, well, nobody outside the white supremacist Right talks about race any more.
a means of firing people up, race is over.
What makes me uneasy about the universal denunciation of Anning by just about everyone in public life is I suspect a lot of people in Australia – a lot more people than you might at first assume – basically agree with what he had to say about Muslims.
“Historically,” Anning said, “the one immigrant group here and in other Western nations that has consistently shown itself to be the least able to assimilate and integrate is Muslims … No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
“I believe that the reasons for ending all further Muslim immigration are both compelling and self-evident.
“The record of Muslims who have already come to this country in rates of crime, welfare dependency and terrorism is the worst of any migrants and vastly exceeds any other immigrant groups.
“A majority of Muslims in Australia of working age do not work, and live on welfare. Muslims in New South Wales and Victoria are three times more likely than other groups to be convicted of crimes. We have black African Muslim gangs terrorising Melbourne.
“We have ISIS-sympathising Muslims trying to go overseas to fight for ISIS and, while all Muslims are not terrorists, certainly all terrorists these days are Muslims.
“So why would anyone want to bring more of them here?” You can argue about the numbers. You can argue about the stupidity of his generalisations about Muslims.
But what you can’t deny is that many people have reached the conclusion – from their own observation of events – that more Islam equals more trouble. And the lesson from Europe is that if respectable politicians aren’t prepared to talk about this, then the public will vote for the unrespectable politicians who will.
So when everyone lined to give Anning a kicking – including Hanson – they were effectively handing him the votes of the people who think this way. And the look on Hanson’s face yesterday as it dawned on her that she had lost her place as Australia’s most divisive politician was priceless.
As for Katter, he looked like a man who had won Tattslotto – not the whole thing but at least a third division. In the battle for the nativist vote at the next election in Queensland, Katter has just got one over Hanson – and he knew it. James Campbell is national politics editor