Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ)
The major political parties are struggling to find ways to effectively counter Pauline Hanson and One Nation.
Their attacks, whether general or on specific policies, bounce off what seems a teflon surface. They bring their targets more attention – and that (so far) appears to work for the Hansonite insurgents rather than against them.
And when they ramp up the attacks, as Anthony Albanese did at the weekend, Hanson brazenly turns the heat back on her opponents.
Albanese told the Queensland Labor conference on Sunday:
Delegates, this a crucial time for our movement.
Across the world hard right populists are on the march.
Peddling politics that is dangerous, divisive, and downright dishonest.They’ll say anything and do anything to win votes. Bend any facts. Peddle misinformation and disinformation. Turn Australian against Australian.
Parties like One Nation have no serious answers to our problems.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers, speaking at the same conference, said this moment represented a “threat to our country and its cohesion, its people and economy posed by a dangerous and divisive Coalition of chaos”.
Hyper rhetoric but hardly much more than that, in what is a generally degraded political debate in this country.
But Hanson knew how to seize the opportunity, on Monday declaring that in their attacks the PM and treasurer had “crossed a line”.
In a series of tweets, she said: “telling Australians that their democratically elected opponents are ‘dangerous’ and a ‘threat to our country’ invites people to treat them as a threat.
“Words have consequences.
“That is how political violence is incited.” She instanced the murder of former British conservative MP Ann Widdecombe.
Hanson said she completely supported free speech but “where I draw the line is normalising and encouraging potential incitement to violence”.
Queensland LNP federal member Garth Hamilton pushed back.“I think there is a little bit of hypocrisy at play here in this constant game of, ‘I am the victim’. I would remind everybody, this is a party that, by its own admission, is currently infiltrated by extremists,” he told the ABC.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland on Tuesday made a similar argument: “Senator Hanson should examine what her party and what her ideology and her behaviour is doing. […]
“When you go on and you entertain some of the individuals whom she has been entertaining, who are not only convicted criminals, when you admit that you have a party that has been infiltrated by extremists and neo-Nazis, this is exactly the kind of danger to which politicians are being put in this country.”
Hanson was back on X. “Attorney-General Michelle Rowland must retract her comments and apologise for slandering One Nation and its supporters while appearing to excuse the violent threats directed against them.”
In another interview, former minister Ed Husic referenced the inflammatory nature of some of Hanson’s own comments, such as suggesting there were no good Muslims.
And so the tit-for-tat rolls on.
There is no doubt Hanson is the object of some vile attacks on social media and death threats, to the extent she needs police protection. Some of the language heard in clips from the recent rally of school students protesting against her was appalling.
It’s also true (as she points out) that the PM is hypocritical in repeatedly urging people to “turn down the temperature” and then turning it up himself.
But the point remains that on any reasonable interpretation, Albanese’s language on Sunday fell way short of an incitement to violence.
In political terms, Hanson outsmarted him (and the government) by casting him as the villain and herself as the victim. The tactic was likely to appeal to her base, although Labor would argue more generally, voters would see though it.
Albanese doesn’t yet have a effective strategy for dealing with the Hanson phenomenon. The polls and the Labor loss to One Nation in the Western Australian state byelection at the weekend show he has to find one – even if he still can hardly believe it has come to this.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.