Hansonism:
We are all Australians

Pauline Hanson’s Australian populism holds that the common good of the nation transcends the special interests of particular groups in the nation. By developing a strong and flourishing nation, all groups can benefit. Fragmentation, produced by new class policies such as immigrationism, multiculturalism, Asianisation and Aboriginalism (romantic primitivism), ultimately divided us and weakened us. Aboriginal separatism, paradoxically backed up by a massive quality of taxpayer’s money - is not in the interests of the Aboriginal people. The Aboriginal industry has received up to $2 billion a year which for about 240,000 people of Aboriginal descent gives around $8333 each. As Graeme Campbell MP noted in his talk to the Samuel Griffith Society in 1994, this would mean that an average Aboriginal family would be able to buy a completely new house every two or three years, hypothetically of course.

So the money is not getting through to the Aboriginal people where it is needed most. It is locked up in bureaucracies rather than being used by community elders at the grass roots level. How it is possible that some Aboriginal communities do not have adequate clean drinking water (the water of many Australian capital cities also leaves much to be desired) and do not have adequate medical care? If this can’t be bought for $2 billion, would any more money buy it?

Lois O’Donoghue, chair of the Aboriginal and Torress Strait Islander Commission has said on the question of the Federal government’s concern for accountability:

"However, I can take exception to the assumptions that seem to underline the Government’s actions. I can wonder whether or not they are knowingly drawing strength and support from prejudiced and ignorant opinions and ask why indigenous Australians need to be more accountable than anyone else, for comparatively small amounts of money."

(L O'Donoghue, "Who's Accountable to Whom?", The Weekend Australian, June 15-16, 1996 (Pg 26).

In the light of those comments, consider the following:

  • An audit by the accountants KPMG of 1122 Aboriginal organisations, commissioned by the government, has found that 997 organisations - almost 90 percent are guilty of ‘irregularities’. Sixty were judged not fit and proper to continue. They received almost $28 million. ATSIC will keep the findings confidential because it is not legally bound to release the findings, and it opposes the audit. The offences include buying luxury cars, houses for directors, holidays and overseas travel without proper authorisation.

    (K Sweetman, "Aboriginal Groups Misuse Funding", The Advertiser, October 15th, 1996 Pg 3).

  • The payroll for senior ATSIC executives has more than doubled from $1.014 million to $2.7 million in the past year. The best paid executive is on a $180,000 package. Twenty executives are on a package of more than $110,000. Is 1995 the number of such executives was only eight. Lois O’Donoghue, Chairwoman of ATSIC has a salary in the $170,000-179,000 range. An ATSIC spokeswoman is quoted ‘What you’re saying is that because Aboriginal people are impoverished they should be paid less.’ Speaking for one in three Australians on welfare: wouldn’t it be nice to be ‘impoverished!

    (M Horan, "ATSIC Bosses' Windfall", The Advertiser, November 6th, 1996, pp1-2).

  • At the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission October 1996 Regional Council elections, Aboriginal voters delivered a decisive vote of no confidence in the board.

  • Two executives in one of the biggest Aboriginal organisations used about $100,000 of taxpayers money for overseas holidays for their families and they also used thousands of dollars allegedly for trips they never took. An Australian Securities Commission probe showed up to $1 million misused by the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service. The people in question are Paul Coe and Cecil Patten. Coe’s retainer rose from $120,000 to $140,000 without official change.

    Coe billed the Aboriginal Legal Service $750,000 worth of legal work above his annual retainer fee of $120,000 (there is no way of knowing the precise figures as the accounts were so badly kept).

    He also received loans from a loan account and owed up to $50,000.

    He kept $8,000 intended for a business trip to Guatemala which he did not take and received $20,000 in travellers cheques for a New York trip he didn’t take. This money was used on a family trip to London. As well, he claimed expenses of up to $800 a day on one overseas trip.

    Patten’s family took a seven week round the world holiday trip, paid by the Aboriginal Legal Service. Patten received payments of $5,018; $5,000; $2,650; and $3,000 on a trip which he couldn’t explain. He was owed ‘For international, constitutional, human rights and criminal work in excess of payments received.' The Federal government was said at the time to be considering legal action over the Australian Securities Commission findings. If an Anglo-Australian working in a bank pocketed five dollars or walked out with a Mars bar from Woolworths he/she would be rightly prosecuted.

    (K Sweetman "Aboriginal Bosses in Travel "Rort", The Advertiser, November 12th, 1996, Pg 1)

  • Aboriginal anti-corruption campaigner Sharon Firebrace, believes that white authorities have turned a blind eye to corruption and malpractice in Aboriginal organisations. Endemic corruption in Aboriginal affairs is in her opinion a "form of genocide". Something has to be done to stop certain leaders and factions betraying their own people. A royal commission is necessary to determine the full extent of mismanagement of services to the Aboriginal community. She has been the target of death threats and bomb threats.

    (B Faust, "The Test of Racial Unity", The Weekend Australian, April 13-14th, 1996, Pg 22). Beatrice Faust is right to observe that giving money to ATSIC is like carrying water in a basket.

    The exploration of aborigines by the new class goes much deeper. A tragic example is the Hindmarsh Island Bridge fiasco. (On the Hindmarsh Bridge debate see: Chris Kenny, "It would be nice if there was some women's business", Duffy & Snellgrove, Potts Point, 1996; D Wilson, "Telling the Truth", IPA Review, vol. 49, no. 1, 1996 pp 37-43; A Gough, "Hindmarsh Osland: Burial Place of Anthropology", The Adelaide Review, February, 1996, pp14-15; J Kerin and K Towers, "Aborigines Claim Bridge Racism", The Weekend Australian, December 9-10th, 1995 pg 4; M Weidenhofer, "Photos Like 'Swastika to the Jew'", The Advertiser, September 9th, 1995, pg 5; M Weidenhofer and C James, "Lies, Lies, Lies", The Advertiser, December 22nd, 1995 Pg 1; C Pearson, "Time to Embrace A Few Home Truths", The Australian, September 19th, 1996, Pg 9.) Tickner imposed the ban on the proposed Hindmarsh Island Bridge because of revelations about secret Ngarrindjeri women traditions, secret women’s business. The Lower Murray Aboriginal culture is one of the most intensely studied and none of these claims had been documented in the literature. (R Brunton, "Hindmarsh Claims Traded on Ignorance", The Australian, March 20th, 1996 pg 10) The case against the bridge was not based on land claims or damage to sacred sites. It was based on the alleged spiritual beliefs of Agarrindjeri women about the effects such a bridge would have on their fertility. This consideration in itself violated the anti-racism of the establishment, for as the philosopher John Chandler observed: "To ban a bridge because Ngarrindjeri women believe it would destroy their fertility is to impose the religious views of one group on everyone else; that’s not to accord equal respect to aboriginal beliefs, it is to award them a status of exceptional and unfair privilege." (J Chandler, "The Bridge and Liberal Principles", The Adelaide Review, September 1995). In liberal societies religious beliefs are regarded as a private matter, the truth of which does not require demonstration.

    However if religious beliefs, be they Aboriginal or Catholic, are to be the foundation of public policy determination, the truth content of the beliefs must be determined. It is important to keep in mind this point.

    A South Australian Royal Commission found that the 'secret women’s business' from its inception was a fabrication. White protesters, particularly environmentalists, had brought Aboriginal groups into the Hindmarsh Island dispute because there seemed to be no other way to stop the bridge. (J Kerin, K Towers and L Taylor, "Women's Secrets 'Fabricated by Anti-Bridge Lobby'", The Australian, Decmebr 22nd, 1995 pg 1) Note what is being claimed here. The claim is about the truth of Ngarrindjeri women’s beliefs, whether or not such a system of beliefs exist. It is not a claim about the truth content of those beliefs. For example in debates in the United States about equal-time for Biblical creationism in the classroom, considerations of the truth content of those beliefs were relevant. Not one doubts that that the Biblical creationist beliefs were relevant. No one doubts that the Biblical creationist belief system exists and that people believe it to be true. Otherwise there would be no court case. Now the truth content of the claim that the Hindmarsh Island Bridge would adversely affect the fertility of the Ngarrindjeri women was not, and would not be examined. The new class would roast any such considerations. Yet these beliefs are said to be true. We could believe that we are being persecuted by Australia’s secret thought police, but unless the claim was true it amounts to nothing. People can believe all sorts on nonsense. That is their private business. But to make it a matter of public policy requires the establishment of the truth of these beliefs. Well, did any of the medical practitioners who supported the ban of the bridge offer medical evidence in support of the decreased fertility claim? Was any biological evidence or even psychological evidence advanced in support of this claim? Of course not. How could the building of a bridge affect one’s capacity to ovulate and conceive? The connection here is not a casual-scientific one but a magical one.

    Professor Marcia Langton said that Aboriginal women would be denied natural justice is culturally sensitive women’s only information from the report of a second federal inquiry into the Hindmarsh Island Bridge was read into Parliament.

    (J Kerin, "Aboriginal Women Fear Bridge Report", The Australian. April 22nd, 1996, pg 4).

    Professor Langton is paraphrased by The Australian as saying that the Hindmarsh Island Bridge sage was indicative of the racist perception of Aboriginal women’s beliefs and represented a continuing maltreatment of Aboriginal women’s beliefs. A 'national psychosis' appears to prevent 'white, male-dominated Australian culture from accepting the validity of women’s beliefs' (See P O'Shane, "Beware the New Prophets of the Cargo Cult", The Australia, April 26th, 1996, Pg 12 for a battle between Pat O'Shane and Marcia Langton). At no point is the issue of objective truth and evidence a concern. Multiculturalism has descended into the depths of cultural relativism, where truth is solely a product of ideology. No doubt even our concern with objective truth and evidence would be viewed a white male-dominated concern. Against this, all argument is useless.

    In Connie Nungulla McDonald’s "When You Grow Up" (by C N McDonald and J Finnane, Magabala Books, Broome, 1996), and a review in The Australian by Elisabeth Wynhausen ("Connie's War: The Story that Won't go away", The Weekend Australian Review, May 11-12th, 1996, Pg 5), a story is discussed which won’t go out of McDonald’s head (is there an implication in this that the story must be true?): "In 1942, word went round the Kimberley that the army had orders to shoot the Aborigines if the Japanese invaded." She admits that this is based on rumour and is denied by the soldiers who were supposed to have done this deed. In fact, the truth is in the reverse. The Japanese who had observed Australia in the lead-up to the war believed that the natives could not be enlisted or even used to get rid of the Europeans. They thought that collaboration was impossible, so Aborigines and Europeans would both be shot. This makes more sense than McDonald’s idea. Why would the Aborigines have trusted an imperial force like Japan? To suppose that the Aborigines would have believed that the invading Japanese army, which had already committed genocide in China and although it was then not known later, in Units such as 721, Nazi-style was crimes) would suddenly treat Aborigines fairly, is an absurd supposition. It hardly gives due respect to Aboriginal intelligence.

    We could continue for pages multiplying examples, but the conclusion to be made is clear. The so-called Aboriginal debate, initiated by Pauline Hanson, is not merely about the problems of Aborigines. As in the Hindmarsh Island Bridge debate, their concerns and welfare are not high on the agenda of the new class elite. When it suits their ends, these poor people are used. We have seen the same situation with the Asian immigration debate and we will see the same situation again for the gun debate which our colleagues will discuss below. It is a credit to Pauline Hanson’s intuitive genius that she has recognised this and addressed the issue in the public policy debate. Ordinary Australians do have a common enemy, but it is not Aborigines, Asians or people of any particular colour, race or creed. Our common oppressors are a class of raceless, placeless cosmopolitan elites who are exercising almost absolute power over us; like black spiders above the wheels of industry, they are spinning the webs of our destiny. We can only escape these webs by organised action.

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