Review 21.18
11 November - 24 November 1996

Politics is full of paradoxes. Such as that of the journalist or newspaper columnist who complains that a particular interest group (Jews, homosexuals, economic rationalists, economic irrationalists, etc, etc.) has a hold over the media and won't allow dissenting voices (such as theirs) to be heard; yet who still gets to complain this way week-in, week-out without anyone bothering to stop them.

Or the politician who stands up in parliament and announces that there's no such thing as freedom of speech in this country any more, and then sits down again without realising that were there no such thing as freedom of speech in this country any more, he would have been sitting down with a couple of firm hands pressing on his shoulders and an undisclosed number of bullet wounds in his upper body.

Here's another fine example. This is Australian Financial Review columnist John Stone talking about Pauline Hanson, political correctness, and the supposedly woeful state of Australia over the past 25 years.

"It is a country where Labor and the Liberals agree on almost everything, ignoring in both cases the views of the electorate they purport to represent: and where, should either ever seek to stray from that politically correct (PC) line, they are quickly whipped back into it again by the media cowhands who ride herd on them."

Who, a reader from the Congo might ask (if he or she is ever allowed into the country), is John Stone, and what are his qualifications to rail against the establishment like an antipodean Ross Perot? Let's wander over to Who's Who and find out:

Career: former Leader, National Party Senate, former Shadow Minister Finance, Chairman J T Campbell & Co. Ltd since 1994, Consultant Potter Partners Melbourne 1985-87 ... Secretary, Australian Treasury 1979-84, Deputy Secretary 1976-1978 ... Director Australia, NZ and Sth Africa International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Washington 1967-70. Clubs: Australian (Melb), Vincents (Oxford), Canberra Wine and Food, Melbourne.

This is not the CV of a common man who's never been given the opportunity to say his piece, and is fed up with all those pointy-heads in Parliament ruining his life. Nor is it the CV of a man whose natural political ally would be Pauline Hanson. This is, after all, the woman who said in her maiden speech: "If this government wants to be fair dinkum, then it must stop kowtowing to financial markets, international organisations, world bankers, investment companies and big business people." In short, the very people that John Stone has worked with and for throughout his professional life.

"Any fair-minded reader (!) could only conclude that she was about 85 per cent (say) right," Stone said of Hanson's maiden speech. 85 per cent right. Well he would say that, wouldn't he? After all, the man who wrote the speech, the very interesting John Pasquarelli was once on the staff of none other than John Stone, the People's Friend. John Stone didn't specify the 15 per cent he didn't like, but it might have been that bit about the world bankers. If it was, then John Stone is laboring under a severe misapprehension about the nature of populist politics. He should know by now that you don't get to pick and choose with the Hansons of this world. Everyone's to blame for her miserable life, John, you included. Especially you. And your old mates at the International Monetary Fund.

What John Stone also conveniently forgets is that whatever disenchantment there may be out there in the electorate with multiculturalism and immigration policy and so-called "political correctness", this pales into insignificance when it comes to the anger and despair felt by John's beloved ordinary Australians towards the very economic policies he has consistently supported, and which have been pushed through by both parties ignoring the views of the electorate.

Now, are these voters right to feel angry? Well, by John's new-found populist standards, it hardly matters.

And we're all populists now. The Prime Minister believes that an appropriate response to Hanson's nightmare vision of an Australia "swamped" by Asians is to say that a lot of Australians agree with her. I cannot think of a single policy position opposed to the Prime Minister's known preferences that would elicit a similar response. If a politician called for a return to protectionism, and that received the same media attention as Hanson's semi-literate comments on immigration, John Howard would not be on radio telling us how that struck a chord with a lot of ordinary Australians. He would be out there, vigorously defending the Government's policy. But to say any more on this would be stating the bleeding obvious.

I swing in my moods on Pauline Hanson. Sometimes she terrifies me, sometimes she doesn't. Her fellow malcontent Graeme Campbell offered an interesting observation on her the other day in the Bulletin. "There are people out there who would much prefer the (immigration) debate to be centered around Pauline instead of me and AAFI (Australians Against Further Immigration), because we know the facts." (Bulletin, November 5). Putting aside the inherent conspiratorial tone to this - the people "out there" pushing Hanson aren't the so-called multicultural lobby but Graeme's mates in the League of Rights and Graeme's former employee John Pasquarelli - he is right to point out that Hanson doesn't have the intellectual clout to build a credible anti-immigration force. And if Pasquarelli got fed up with living out of a suitcase in Ipswich, then the so-called immigration debate would die a quick death.

For my part, I hope that someone does offer Pasquarelli the round-the-world ticket he so desperately wants, just before booking Pauline for a series of back-to-back media interviews without the puppet-meister scripting her lines. But when she bombs out badly on immigration, I do hope that she'll direct her undoubted rabble-rousing talents to attack economic rationalism. Call me selfish, but I want to read what John Stone has to say about her then.