Review 22.8
6-26 June 1997

In mid-May Treasurer Peter Costello "revealed" that the black hand of the League of Rights was behind Pauline Hanson. The League was using her, he said, and she might not even know it. Uh oh, I thought, it's starting. Then, last week, Immigration Minister Phil Ruddock challenged Hanson to dissociate herself from the League, which he said promoted views that were "racist, divisive and morally reprehensible."

Oddly enough, that's pretty much how I'd describe the views of newly elected Liberal Senator Ross Lightfoot on "primitive" Aboriginal people, yet all that his parliamentary colleague, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Senator John Herron, could say in response was that his newly elected colleague "has every right to express his personal views on a wide range of subjects". So has the League of Rights, if you ask me, but I wouldn't want to sit on the same benches as them.

On the other hand, Senator Lightfoot might. In late 1994, he was telling the WA Parliament how the League weren't such bad blokes. "I do not know why there is this sudden fuss about the League of Rights," he told the Legislative Council. "Let me refer members to the policies of the League of Rights, which include adopting an immigration policy that prevents social fragmentation and friction, imposing a limit on non-European immigrants to a rate at which they can be assimilated, and holding a referendum on immigration policy. Many Australians from all sides would agree with that policy." Indeed. And it also believes that Jewish people are Satan's earthly emissaries, a fact about the League that successive conservative politicians (and one notable former Labor MP) habitually appear to forget.

Ross Lightfoot, however, is the same man who signed a petition on behalf of Lyndon LaRouche. Pauline Hanson. Ross Lightfoot. The Liberal Party certainly knows how to pick its candidates... Which is why it's a bit of a laugh seeing the Liberals of all people trot out the League bogey to frighten the voters. Sure Eric Butler would love nothing more than to clamber aboard Hanson's bandwagon, but let's face it, if he's to find a square inch of space (imperial measurements for our Eric, thanks), he's going to have to push a fair few Liberals and Nationals off first.

He could start, say, with Steve Wilson, Ipswich Liberal numbers man, who is still defending Hanson whenever he has the opportunity, and who in mid-May moved to squash suggestions that the Liberal Party might direct its preferences to the ALP in Oxley in the next Federal Election. Local Liberal and National Party activists - not, as far as one can tell, League of Rights members - also ran Hanson's campaign and handed out how-to-vote cards for her, and it will be interesting to see whether this is repeated in the next election. Particularly as the PM has flatly refused to intervene to force the party's hand.

Then there was Pauline's larger-than-life minder-cum-guru, John Pasquarelli, who had been running her show for more than six months before the Liberal Party got around to wondering whether it should expel him, and even then Pasquarelli beat them to the punch in October last year. Eric Butler is said to be in Pasquarelli's social circle, and this may even be true, but what is much more certain is that a lot of Victorian Liberals are also in Pasquarelli's social circle, and Pasquarelli himself is a former Liberal Party parliamentary candidate for the federal seat of Jaga Jaga.

Pasquarelli was replaced by David Thomas, former staffer of right-wing Queensland National Party MP Bob Katter. Not the League, but the National Party. Katter in turn picked up former Hanson staffer Brett Heffernan. Then Thomas jumped ship and was replaced by David Oldfield, former adviser to right-wing NSW Liberal MP Tony Abbott. Oldfield was allegedly assisting Hanson's cause while he was still on Abbott's staff, for three months: David Thomas claims that Oldfield checked "virtually everything I did for Ms Hanson as regards media". The great survivor of her staff, it would appear, is Barbara Hazelton, former staffer for short-lived National Party Senator (and latter-day Hanson booster) John Stone (as was Pasquarelli, come to think of it, back in 1989-90).

Then there's Peter Murray, the Tasmanian National Party leader, who warmly welcomed Hanson to his state in May, and who said he was advising her on policy formulation. "We are behind you ... we pray for you," he told her. Or National Party stalwart Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who, according to wife Lady Flo is very supportive of Ms Hanson and her policies. And until Hanson decided to launch her own party, more than a few of her love-ins were hosted by Queensland National Party branches.

Can you see a picture developing here? If not, let me fill in a couple of other pieces. Late last year, a senior Liberal Party figure told me that former party director Andrew Robb had rejected suggestions that a Hanson bloc in the Senate would be a national disaster: on the contrary, he is alleged to have said, such people would be much easier to deal with than the Green-Democrat-Independent bloc at present holding the balance of power.

Similar comments were recently aired by Michelle Grattan: "some Government sources are not fazed by the Hanson factor, arguing the Government doesn't control the Senate now and so whether a Hansonite or two were elected wouldn't matter much" (Australian Financial Review, 19 May). Pauline Hanson entered political life thanks to the Liberal Party, not the League of Rights or the Ku Klux Klan or the East Ipswich branch of the Racial Preservation Society.

And if the Liberals don't direct preferences against her in the next election, and Hanson is re-elected, it will again be thanks to the Liberal Party. Not the Liberal Party of Jeff Kennett or Malcolm Fraser or Fred Chaney or Ian Viner, but the Liberal Party of John Howard and Ross Lightfoot.

But hey, as our PM keeps helpfully reminding us, it's a free country.