Queensland Times, Page 4
Tuesday, 18th August 1997
The Australian Labor Party was sanctioning a boycott of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games because its internet site was linked to a letter by activist Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, Federal Member for Oxley Pauline Hanson said yesterday.
Ms Hanson said even though the Federal Government had banned Mr Ervin from entering the Australia, he was in contact with “radicals in Australia through LeftLink, a violent, online underground arm of the ALP”.
She said correspondence LeftLink had posted on the internet stated that Mr Ervin was planning to return to Australia and had set up a “Boycott 2000 Coalition” in the 17 countries that had protested his deportation from Australia.
She said LeftLink was accessed through the ACTU web page, which described LeftLink as a national organisation. the ACTU web page was included on the ALP web page, therefore the ALP had sanctioned the information LeftLink presented.
The ACTU responded to the claims on the internet, saying that Ms Hanson’s One Nation party was five clicks of a mouse button away from the Nazi party. It chartered a link through One Nation’s internet awards section to a liberal-themed internet page, then through other web sites to a extremist site depicting Nazism.
An ALP spokesman and ACTU spokesman did not respond to an invitation to comment on the matter yesterday. But the One Nation web page said the Nazi’s site link to One Nation ceased with one click, to the second internet site. It said the second site was only linked to One Nation because it was a site listed on its web page as sympathetic to Ms Hanson’s politics. It did not contain a solid link to One Nation.
Ms Hanson said extracts from the correspondence between the Aboriginal Nyungah tribe and Mr Ervin posted by LeftLink proved Australia must denounce Mr Ervin.
The letter from Mr Ervin said: "cause it not only makes your wishes known, but it confirms our statements that an international boycott of these bread and circus Olympic games, on stolen land soaked with the blood of your ancestors, is really the way forward to winning the human rights of the indigenous people in the land known as Australia."