Liberal party leadership: Beware – voting One Nation often leads to Labor governments
Idea
On a sweltering summer’s day last month, political tribes gathered at Brisbane’s Catholic cathedral, St Stephen’s, to send Ron Boswell to rest. Many of the major figures in non-Labour politics, past and present, were there. So were Labor politicians, including Anthony Albanese, who graciously approved the state funeral. John Howard delivered the eulogy.
Bozzie, as he was universally known, was an immensely popular figure. He had been a National Party senator for over 31 years: only five people since Federation had served longer in the Senate. Although defined by his deep social conservatism, he had friends from across the political spectrum. While his temperament was generous and groundbreaking, he was fearless to the point of brutality in defending what he believed in.
This fearlessness was never more on display than in his attitude towards One Nation. He absolutely hated them; not just because of the threat they pose to his beloved National Party, but also because of cheap populism and artificial conservatism, which he sees as an insult to real conservatives like himself. In Ron’s eyes, they were charlatans, hucksters, political snake oil salesmen.
Typical of an outspoken politician like Ron Boswell, he believed that the only way to deal with One Nation was through direct struggle. No punching. No weasel words. No meaty mouth compromise. Ron could not tolerate the race-baiting and prejudice-mongering that was and still is One Nation’s trademark. He called them as they were; just as he took the fight to another racist right-wing movement, the League of Rights, in the 1980s.
Ron’s Senate campaign in 2001 entered the folklore of Australian politics. One Nation achieved great success in the 1998 Queensland state election, winning 11 seats, paving the way for years of Labor state governments. (Conservatives defending Pauline Hanson, remember: vote One Nation and you usually get a Labor government.) Three years later, Hanson turned her sights to the Senate. Ron was his target.
Andrew Meares
Ron campaigned with the slogan “It’s not pretty, but it’s pretty effective.” (He distanced himself from justice; although he always looked like an unmade bed, he had a face full of character.) He took to the highways and byways of Queensland – right into the heart of some of Australia’s most ultra-conservative regions – to spread the message that One Nation had no answers to the problems that plagued them. He won, thus stopping the early rise of the One Nation. It would be 15 years before Hanson found his way into the Senate.
As Ron Boswell has shown, the way to deal with One Nation is not to chase it in a race to the political bottom. You’ll never surpass Pauline Pauline, and it’s a fool’s errand to try. And you lose central Australia in the process.
It is particularly important for the new Liberal leadership to remember this. Angus Taylor has already identified immigration as one of his most important issues. It is extremely appropriate, even timely, for a discussion about population policy. I have no doubt that public opinion is ready for such a debate.
Inevitably, Labor and the Greens will misrepresent this legitimate national debate as a mild Hansonism, a dog whistle. This makes it all the more important that Taylor, while tackling an issue that genuinely concerns both Hanson supporters and many other Australians, shows that he has absolutely no time for One Nation and the type of politics it implements. Holding a reasoned national debate on immigration is not meant to be a pale echo of One Nation, but Taylor’s surest way to protect himself from this slander is to adopt the same approach that Ron Boswell did so successfully.
Open 7.30 Last Friday, Tony Abbott, who was tasked with destroying One Nation in its infancy by Howard in the late 1990s, claimed the party was a different party to the one it was 30 years ago. Not. One of the reasons for Hanson’s success was his consistency. One Nation has been an openly racist party since 1996, when it used its maiden speech to claim Australia was “overrun by Asians”. It forms the basis of its brand. There’s no subtlety or ambiguity about this: Pauline isn’t dog-whistling.
Their message has never changed. Even her tricks are the same: Just three months ago, she repeated the burqa stunt she first tried in the Senate in 2017.
As I said on that occasion, it is entirely possible to be a good law-abiding Australian and a devout Muslim. To taint half a million Australian Muslims with the guilt of Islamist extremists within their own community is as unfair as a century ago in sectarian Australia when Protestants branded Irish Catholics disloyal because of a few Fenian revolutionaries in their midst.
Of course Pauline Hanson has the right to sue his views. His supporters have the right to vote for him. This is how free societies work. But Liberal leaders need to be prepared to shout One Nation out for what it is, as Boswell did. Maintaining a scrupulous distance but otherwise remaining silent will not work.
As his beloved Australian flag-draped coffin was carried out of the church, the congregation stood up together to sing that beautiful old hymn. Don’t be afraid. Ron Boswell wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. He was certainly not afraid of Pauline Hanson.
George Brandis is the former high commissioner to the United Kingdom and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney general.
George Brandis is the former high commissioner to the United Kingdom and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney general. He is currently a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.
