Wednesday 27th November 1996
Search news archive by day | Search archive by text (NB - News Index) |
Definitive Guide to Aussie webs | Global Web Builders Gold |
The Kid's Locker Room | World Wide Websters |
Love her or hate her, the controversial Independent Member of Parliament from the seat of Oxley, Pauline Hanson has got guts... she was invited by the Queensland Aboriginal Co-ordinating Council (QACC) to talk on her policies which include the scrapping of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) - the group's lifeblood.
It goes without saying that her talk to the group went down like a ton of bricks with insults soon flying at Ms Hanson from the council members and that the television cameras were there to record every moment of it.
Eventually Ms Hanson had had enough and walked out of the meeting visibly shaken by the hatred that eminated from the meeting.
At the meeting Pauline Hanson told the council members that she did not hate Aborigines and said that she wanted to work side-by-side with them if they were willing to pull together with Australians for "one people, one nation, one flag".
In a heated question time after her address Ms Hanson told the Aborigines that they needed to "get over" the atrocities of the past and work towards changes for the future.
"How much longer are you going to live with it?" she asked, "Atrocities have happened throughout the world not just to Aboriginal people." She went on to compare the plight of starving citizens in Great Britain who stole a loaf of bread to feed their family who were in the 1700s, for their crime, sent off to Australia by boat to serve out the rest of their natural lives to some of the injustices meeted out to the Aborigines in the past.
The QACC Chairman, Lloyd Fourmile, expressed sincere gratitude to Ms Hanson for having the guts to come and talk to his members. He expressed frustration and annoyance that State Premier Rob Borbidge had been "too busy" to attend the meeting which was held in State Parliament.
Fourmile said, "I don't think people hate her. I think our people need Pauline to understand the history of this country and some of the atrocities the indigenous people in this country had to face."
During her address Ms Hanson compared some of the issues now being raised by the debate like a festering sore which needed to be addressed.
"It is like a festering sore that needs to be lanced and opened up and spoken about if we are ever going to change," she said.
Ms Hanson also claimed yesterday that the major political parties were " hell bent" on selling off Australian icons and assets to foreigners "at all costs".
Ms Hanson's concerns stem from the Australian government's action plan to relax restrictions on foreign ownership of residential real estate.
"If our real estate market is thrown open to foreigners, Australians will become tenants in their own country, paying rents to foreign landlords who would, no doubt, send much of their profits overseas," she said.
One only has to look at what has happened to the pricing of houses and apartments on Queensland's Gold Coast to concur with Ms Hanson's views. The average Australian cannot afford to live there and most of the sky rise buildings are owned by Asian investors.
It appears that Ms Hanson's aggressively misreported views on immigration has started to cause ripples in Asia now. In Ipswich, the seat of Oxley, the Ipswich Regional Development Corporation (IRDC) have been informed through a report that Ipswich is now seen as the "heart of Australian racist problems" in Asia.
Local businesses have expressed concern about this claiming that the impact could be quite dramatic on some of the regions exporting companies.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad also put Australia on notice over the immigration debate. (Reported in the newspapers today as the HANSON SPARKED RACISM DEBATE.)
Mahathir told a news conference, "I don't regard these views as the official Australian policy. It is just an aberration perhaps voiced by some people of no consequence.
"But to say that we don't feel anything about this is wrong. But we are not willing to press the Australian government to put a stop to it."
The Commonwealth and the States last year agreed to apply the Trade Practices Act to all sectors of the economy in return for several billion dollars in competition payments from Canberra over the next decade.
The Nationals are lobbying for the Queensland sugar industry to be exempt from these reforms. Senator Boswell said that the states had surrendered the fate of thousands of small businesses to the Commonwealth and national bodies such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
"The states have handed over the ultimate sanction to the Commonwealth," he said, "the fate of taxi drivers in Sydney, chiropracters in Perth, liquor outlets in Brisbane, pharmacists in Dubbo, architects in Melbourne, and so on, rest with the Federal Treasurer."
The two were remanded in custody to be sentenced on December 10th for their part in the conspiracy to defraud the public by falsely stating the bank's financial position between 1983 and the time of its liquidation in November 1988.
Gee, doesn't the law move fast it only took over eight years to reach the decision - and in the meantime the chief perpetrator, Laurie Connell, who ruined so many innocent Aussies died in February this year virtually without a blemish to his name.
Have a Webster day!
Return to Australian National News of the Day