Review 22.7
11 May - 5 Jun , 1997

Why is Pauline Hanson so popular? I got to thinking about this the other month, after she released Pauline Hanson: The Truth. Once I heard of its claims of Aboriginal cannibalism, I thought, well, that's it; she's going to lose a lot of support now. But she didn't. In fact, if the polls are any indication, her support went up.

Now, as any pollster will tell you, the mere fact that her name was again in the headlines would have been enough to lift her a few percentage points, never mind what she was saying. She could have admitted she herself was a cannibal and she still might have wrenched two points off Cheryl Kernot.

More importantly, I suspect the irresistible rise of Pauline H. well proves the argument that this is about much more than race, and perhaps presents a few handy clues about how Hansonism should be dealt with.

People have been trying to place Hanson in context for some time: a few weeks ago, in a Melbourne Herald Sun article, I compared her with British anti-immigration MP Enoch Powell. The very same day in The Australian, Sophie Masson compared her with the French Front National's Jean Marie Le Pen. Masson's parallel is a good one. One of Le Pen's more unforgettable slogans was: "I say what you only dare to think." And to a large extent, that explains Hanson's appeal to a rather jaded and cynical electorate. She says the unthinkable.

John Howard doesn't fully comprehend this, and that's why he's never going to savage her in the same way as he cheerfully goes for Kim Beazley every Question Time. You just had to see his woeful performance on the 7.30 Report, with Kerry O'Brien manfully trying to extract a condemnation with a crowbar. Are her views offensive? asked Kerry. Yes, said our leader, he felt that opposing foreign investment was offensive. Wow! And this was the week that she and her creepy little bagman Ettridge had been out fingering Aborigines as man-eaters.

No, John Howard looks at her supporters, and he takes out his Casio pocket calculator and his Malcolm Mackerras pendulum, and thinks: Those people should be mine. And if I keep my trap shut a little longer, and wait till Pauline self-destructs, they will be mine.

Well, they won't be. They won't be because she's happy to talk about Asian immigration swamping us, and get called a racist and she doesn't back down. Howard said the same in 1988 and backpedalled a thousand miles an hour once the blowtorch came out. People remember that. In fact, Howard can't win however he cuts it. He tells the media that Hanson's not a racist, as he said the other month, and her supporters don't think, Mmm, he's on our side, they think, So why did you expel her from the party during the election?

Frankly, these people don't care what the bleeding heart liberal elite has to say about Hanson. We don't care if she doesn't have the answers, they say, because neither do you. They back her out of spite, like some US blacks back that hokey old fascist Louis Farrakhan simply and solely because he bugs out whitey.

Meanwhile, I can't tell what John Howard's up to. Who can? On the other hand, we do know what Pauline game plan is. With her, what you see is pretty much what you get, and that's pretty much what the "Howard Battlers" want these days. What Enoch Powell used to call "the great simplicities." Mind you, I'd be interested to see how many are queuing to touch the hem of her robe after she's spent the next year dodging questions with that new line of hers: "My policy on that hasn't been written yet." What policy? her supporters will be asking. We thought she had all the answers in her head.

Enoch Powell, Jean Marie Le Pen, Louis Farrakhan ... who is she? Actually, I suspect she's more of a Hollywood super action hero-cum-baddie, one of those that you shoot 40 times and still it gets up and comes after you, like The Terminator, shouting "Abolish ATSIC!".

But remember, all these characters have a weak spot. Pauline's is so obvious, I'm amazed no one's seen it before. It's not her politics. It's not her naivete. They're her strengths. It's her inferiority complex. Look at the casualty list from her support team: Maurie Marsden, John Pasquarelli, Jeffrey Babb, Bruce Whiteside. All these men building her up, becoming almost bigger than she is, and then getting the boot.

Only last week, her latest adviser David Thomas jumped ship. (I actually rang Thomas a fortnight ago and asked him when he was leaving - naturally he denied it, but I rattled Hanson's offsider Barbara Hazleton when I told her where I was calling from, which made the whole exercise worthwhile.) Her new adviser, David Oldfield, will be out before the year's out, I bet. And that's where her weak spot kicks in. No one stays for any time (no one who's not an absolute sycophant, that is) because she doesn't take advice, and she certainly doesn't take orders. But when you're as basic as Pauline is and yet you want to be the next Prime Minister you have to accept that other people are going to call the shots sometime. That's what's happening now with One Nation and she's not coping well.

So here's my one point plan for getting rid of Pauline Hanson: target those around her. Target those who are doing her work. Don't bother calling her a racist; it's not going to shift her or her fans an inch. Instead, go for her supporters. Go for her staff. And not in a nasty way. In a nice way. Show the world how they've made this insignificant drone the superstar she is today. C'mon, Good Weekend, hold your nose and run a glowing profile on Pauline's new-found best buddy Barbara Hazelton.

Let's see how long David Ettridge lasts when Hanson starts hearing the rumours about his own gargantuan agenda. What with Hanson's paranoia, and our needling, she won't be able to hold on to a staffer for more than a month.

Hasta la vista, baby! You won't be back.