Why doesn’t Pauline Hanson attack the feminist industry with the same vigour as she attacks the Aboriginal industry and the multicultural industry?
We have the Office of Status of Women and armies of bureaucrats weeding out sex discrimination and still women get less pay than men. So it is a reasonable question.
How does Hanson get away with her seeming contradictions? Will One Nation do well next election? Is it all the media’s fault?
I was asked to answer the last question at a symposium at ANU last week organised by the department of political science. But the other questions were more interesting (of course, it is all the media’s fault; it always is).
Professor Ann Curthoys pointed out the inconsistency over the feminism industry.
There have been common developments with Aborigines, migrants and women in Australia. On Aborigines the society was thoroughly racist until at least World War II. The came the cries for equality before the law and no discrimination based on Aboriginality. This resulted in laws requiring equal pay, the legal right to vote and in 1967 the right to be counted equally.
After about 1970 mere legal equality was seen as not enough. Equality of outcomes was sought. That meant measuring outcomes between groups, between Aborigines and whites. The outcomes were not equal. It required recognition of group rights and the need for extra treatment yield equality of outcome. Group rights included ultimately native title.
It was the same with migration. First there was rampant legal discrimination. Migrants were selected on race. Then individual legal equality was achieved when the White Australia Policy was abandoned and the immigration scheme was made non-discriminatory in the 1970s. Once again it was not enough. Recognition of group rights was needed. Enter multi-culturalism which triumphed group expression.
It was the same with gender. First there was rampant discrimination. Women had to leave the public service (and other employment) upon marriage, for example. Eventually there was legal equality. Nonetheless women still faced glass ceilings. They needed positive discrimination as a counter-eight to past discrimination.
So the Aboriginal, migration and gender issues followed a pattern ending in positive discrimination and group rights and benefits which could be seen to be additional to what non-Aboriginal, non-immigrant and male groups were getting.
Yet, despite the similarities, Hanson went for Aborigines and migrants, not feminist gains. She did not call for the dismantling of special gender programs, other than perhaps the single-parent benefit (which males could apply for in any event, so are arguably not a female benefit).
Curthoys argued that one reason was that because Hanson herself is a woman. She presents herself as a mother of four; a woman with commonsense who has had her share of hard knocks; who has no formal education. An independent woman running a fish and chip shop.
In fact, she is the independent woman that feminists could aspire to. She is the unruly woman, the Currency Lass, the Maid Marion.
So whereas she might want to roll back the carpet on group rights or even individual rights for migrants and Aborigines, she would not do the same thing on the gender front, even though historically and intellectually the three should go hand in hand.
Dr Carol Johnson of the department of political science took up the theme of contradiction in Hanson’s position. Indeed she liken Hanson to Margaret Thatcher in that both could appeal to contradictory groups.
Both are women who deny being feminists yet both succeed as women.
With Hanson the contractions are manifold. She denied being feminist yet is pro-choice; she represents the information poor yet her party has the richest Website (in volume) of any political party in Australia and one of the richest of any political party in the world. She is the wealthy small businesswoman who appeals to the poor. She calls herself a non-politician yet is one of Australia’s most successful first-term politicians.
Johnson argues that some form of Hansonite politics is here to stay. She explains where it sits. Utopia, for Hanson, is in the past. This has to be balanced against the possibility of an ugly dis-utopia in the future.
Prime Minister John Howard is in the middle; he likes the past, but he accepts the need to make changes to improve things. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating is in counterpoint to Hanson. His utopia is in the future after the changes necessary to paint the big picture. His dis-utopia is in the past; it is the banana republic and the narrow, sectarian world of Australia in the insular 1950s.
Globalisation challenges Hanson’s past of Anglo-Celtics domination. UN rights, racial equality, equality of outcomes are international and threatening. For Howard globalisation present economic opportunities even if the social ones are shunned. For Keating, globalisation presented opportunities on both fronts.
Johnson pointed out the bind this puts the Coalition and the Democrat-Greens.
The Coalition cannot offer a full attack on Hanson because it believes in economic globalisation. The Democrat-Greens cannot fully attack because though they agree on hating economic globalisation, they detest Hanson’s view on social matters.
(Of course, in all these developments people who are both economic (ital) and (end ital) social liberals are left utterly in the cold — people like Ian Macphee; Chris Puplick; Chris Gallus; Ian Viner; Fred Chaney; Paul Filing and so on.)
Arguments against the cosmopolitan, educated elites appeal to the Hansonites. They capture the (little) imagination of the rural, uneducated poor. She is the champion of the information have-nots who is applauded when she demands a please explain from any journalist who uses a big word.
They fear the big megametropolises and information rich dominating their world. The rural information-poor will be with us for some time, so the Hanson electorate will not easily go away.
Malcolm Mackerras argued that the single-member system in the House of Representatives would result in One Nation getting only one or two seats restricted to Queensland and perhaps one or two senators. It would steal a lot of primary votes from the Coalition but the Coalition could win on its preferences. It might be possible for Howard to win the election with just 37 percent of the primary vote, making him a mandate-free Prime Minister next term.