Alan Jones on Channel 9, Today programme
4th June 1998
Well wherever you look it’s Pauline Hanson and instead of any kind of intelligent assessment of what she is saying all you read is vilification and personal abuse, abuse of course is normally the language of the intellectual cripple.
There is a tremendous difference between Pauline Hanson and the Pauline Hanson factor. And the Pauline Hanson factor in this country at the moment is very real, and what is it?
Well it is simply the extent to which the government for too long has simply ignored the will of those it is elected to represent. Indeed under Paul Keating’s leadership people from businessmen down have been terrified to argue and the results have been that the people have had foisted upon them a whole raft of legislative changes not only that they do not approve of but decisions that they have never heard of.
For example the Mabo decision was absolutely valid for Eddie Mabo as it related to his circumstances on the Murray Islands, but by what jump in history and anthropology did the High Court, not the Parliament, argue that what happened on the Murray Islands was identical to what happened on mainland Australia. It’s simply a historical nonsense.
Whether you are talking about the Multilateral Agreement on Investment or unfair dismissal laws or the Human Rights and equal opportunities tribunals or the signing of United Nations conventions that Australians have never heard of yet they are binding Australians to decisions that they have not participated in that is the stuff that Australians have had a gutful of and that’s the Pauline Hanson factor.
She can be Josephine Wheelbarrow but the cry of anger and disillusionment in the major political parties would still be there. The major political parties can remove the Pauline Hanson factor easily. Those politicians might start reading some of their correspondence, answering some of their letters and recognising that they are servants of the people not our masters.