By David Oldfield, political adviser to Pauline Hanson.
Courier Mail, Friday 12th June 1998
Why should you vote for One Nation? The alternative question should also be put - why should you vote for National, Liberal or Labor again?
In saying that, we are not proposing One Nation as a protest vote, rather it is looking at what others have done before examining what Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will do.
The front page of one of Australia’s biggest metropolitan newspapers on October 20,1997 showed Australian business and government retrenched 3.3 million fulltime workers in the past 12 years in a massive downsizing of the nation’s workplace and that more than one in two fulltime jobs have disappeared in just over a decade.
Australia is being transformed - from a nation of prosperous fulltime workers into impoverished part-timers.
Twenty years and more of laissez faire economics has done savage and perhaps irreparable damage to Australia.
Both Labor and the Coalition at state and federal levels have the same economic philosophy - globalism, free trade, leave it all to the markets - and, of course, their support for mass migration and multiculturalism.
Then try to make it sound warm and fuzzy but globalisation and other related policies are more helpful to living standards of other nations than to Australians. Globalisation is all about redistribution of wealth, redistribution of industry and redistribution of jobs.
Multiculturalism is a government funded programme that has divided us and reduced the value of our citizenship. Many of the people who live in Australia today do not really think of themselves as Australians but, simply, people who live in Australia. It is much worse in the southern states, but unchecked, it is only a matter of time before the problems in Queensland rival those in other states.
Hanson’s One Nation proposes innovative changes in many areas to address the issues faced by our state and nation.
We will create a people’s bank, initially with a Au$150 million trust, to provide funds at 2% interest rates for new manufacturing projects, expansion of small business and rural assistance. Loans will be linked to a project’s ability to create real long-term jobs. It is all about jobs.
Only those who have a vested interest in the money lending business will criticise this initiative. They have self-interest, not your interest.
We will form a judicial review panel to ensure judges uphold the sentencing policies of the government of the day. Judges must be answerable to the people. They are not above the people.
We will have a referendum on the reintroduction of capital punishment for particularly unthinkable crimes, especially those such as murder of our children. We will introduce truth in sentencing - and it was we who said it first.
We will ensure our streets are safe for the innocent and dangerous for the guilty. Dangerous criminals will send their lives looking over their shoulders and trying to hide their faces.
Who would have thought a land as rich and as large as Australia, with such an abundance of natural wealth and blessed with clever and ingenious people could be so poor? Just ask yourself, has your living standard improved?
Do you feel safer on the streets and do you recognise that many of our elderly no longer feel safe in their own homes?
We have spiralling divorce rates, violence and road rage, soaring bankruptcies, flourishing drug barons and multinationals not paying tax - but no employment certainty for you or your kids.
Is this what government promised us? Is this what our children will inherit?
We can do better - but it will mean electing a new type of representative to our parliaments. We need people with common sense who have patriotism in their hearts. People who care for Queensland and Australia, not foreign or self-interests.
If we want jobs, we must rebuild our manufacturing base and protect our industries.
If we want a secure and prosperous future, we need to take control of our affairs and not let foreigners and their helpers make our decisions in their interests.
To have change, you must vote for change.
Break the Liberal/Labor/National stranglehold on our state. Make Saturday Independence Day for Queensland.