BY BOB AIKEN AND MARNIE KENNEDY
NEWCASTLE, Australia - Some 4,000 people gathered outside the Civic Theatre and at a cultural festival here to protest a May 30 rally featuring fascist politician Pauline Hanson. It was the first public event of Hanson's One Nation party in New South Wales.

In a tense confrontation, the 1,200 ticket holders who attended Hanson's meeting, were loudly heckled by a section of the protesters as they approached the theater in single file behind a line of cops 50 meters long. The jeering was interspersed with chants, including "Pauline Hanson, you're a failure! No White Australia!" referring to the government's racist attacks on immigrants and Aborigines, and "Land rights, yes! Racists, no!" in support of the fight for Aboriginal land rights.

Despite the protest being widely publicized by organizers as peaceful, Sydney's Daily Telegraph reported that nearly 300 police were to be deployed in case "violence erupts."

The majority of demonstrators were youth and local people, and a contingent from the National Union of Students, who traveled three hours from Sydney. As the crowd gathered in front of the police barrier, speakers were addressing a rally called by the Newcastle Anti-Racist Alliance next to the theater.

In her speech to the Newcastle meeting, Hanson was reported as saying that Abstudy, the financial assistance program for Aboriginal students, should be scrapped and the funds redirected toward job creation in Newcastle. She repeated her statements against the "Asianisation" of Australia.

Hanson also attacked the union movement for supporting the Australian Labor Party, which she accused of betraying Newcastle workers by not "protecting" the Australian steel industry. She proposed "a scheme for BHP workers to take over the plant, and tariffs on imported steel," and said that she wanted "to sit down .. with fair dinkum [white] Aussies and talk about what can be done." She warned of an economic takeover of Australia by international forces, and repeated her call to stop immigration to end unemployment.

Protester Neil Willnet, an Aboriginal medical student at Newcastle University, said Hanson is "touching a nerve" in her comments against Aborigines.

Another protester, Fiona Keegan, also a student at Newcastle University, remarked, "It's a time when a lot of people are feeling insecure about where Australia's going. The easy solution is to blame immigrants." She pointed to BHP's recent announcement that it will close its Newcastle steel mill in 1999 cutting the last 2,500 jobs, and said Hanson will "use the closure to her advantage."

Keegan's classmate, Lucy, expressed surprised by the turnout, "I didn't realize how much opposition there was in Newcastle."

The large turnout was fueled by events in the days before the meeting. A parliamentary debate began over the recent report on the Aboriginal "stolen generations," which recommends compensation to those who were victims of the decades-long policy of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families and communities. As many as 100,000 Aboriginal children were snatched from their families between 1910 and the early 1970s. The federal government of Prime Minister John Howard has refused to pay compensation.

This controversy comes on top of an ongoing political fight over Aboriginal land rights, and has deepened a political crisis for the Howard government, which faces enormous pressure from within the governing Liberal-National party coalition to nullify native titles on pastoral leases. The High Court ruled in the Wik decision last December that Aboriginal title may coexist, as a subordinate right, in some circumstances, on these leases.

In response, Aboriginal Land Councils are leading a campaign against such a "land grab," which would further erode Aboriginal land rights. Pastoral leases cover some 40 percent of Australia's land area ranging from small family farms to vast capitalist holdings.

Hanson continues to claim that she is not a "racist," telling Parliament May 27 that she was sorry for the "terrible things that were done" to Aborigines "in the past." She added, however, "We cannot and must not foster or champion Aboriginal culture as an alternative society to our own."

In a radio interview on the same day as her Newcastle meeting, Hanson distanced herself from comments by West Australian Liberal Party Sen. Ross Lightfoot on May 28 who asserted that Aborigines were the "lowest colour on the civilization spectrum." Hanson claimed, "I have never denigrated the Aboriginal people," adding "I am concerned for their well-being..but we are all Australians together."

Meanwhile, three prominent rightist politicians in Tasmania who are associated with Hanson, were defeated in elections for the Tasmanian Upper House. Two of the candidates campaigned against the recent repeal of antigay laws.

The "message sent out by these elections is that working- class people have rejected the politics of minority-bashing," said Rodney Croome, the spokesperson for the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group, and one of the organizers of a protest against Hanson in Hobart, May 9.

Marnie Kennedy and Bob Aiken are members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union in Sydney.  
 
 
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