BY JOANNE KUNIANSKY
SYDNEY, Australia - In the biggest shake-up of the bourgeois two-party system in this country in decades, an incipient fascist formation - Pauline Hanson's One Nation party - gained up to 10 seats at its electoral debut in Queensland state elections June 13, primarily at the expense of the governing Liberal-National party coalition of state premier Robert Borbidge. Hanson formed One Nation in April 1997, some 13 months after being elected an Independent federal Member of Parliament (MP).

The vote, which according to Brisbane's Courier-Mail "became a referendum on One Nation," showed the depth of social tensions and sharp political polarization - the product of deepening economic depression conditions and slashed government services, particularly in the countryside.

The rightist party failed to gain a foothold in metropolitan Brisbane, the state capital, where the Australian Labor Party (ALP) took at least five seats from the Liberals. This follows an increase in working-class resistance and solidarity, which were advanced by the recent battle by wharfies around the country to defend their union.

Bourgeois politicians on all sides were stunned by the 23 percent vote for One Nation. Borbidge's National Party, the state's dominant coalition partner, saw its support decimated. The election results give a major boost to the ultraright group's veneer of parliamentary respectability. One Nation's newly elected candidates include two active- duty cops and several small businesspeople.

With the final vote totals expected on June 18, three seats are still undecided out of a total of 89. At press time, One Nation appeared likely to take 10, the Nationals 23, the Liberals 8, Labor 44, with 2 seats going to Independents. The final result poses the possibility of a hung parliament and another election. The ALP may win a single-seat majority or the support of the two Independents to form a government. Failing this, a minority government could be formed by the coalition partners supported by One Nation MPs. The prospect of such an unstable government potentially dependent on One Nation has alarmed Australia's capitalist rulers. The Australian Financial Review editorialized June 12, "Australia cannot afford to have its leading growth state governed by a party that is forced to dance to the tune of Hansonomics."

This was summed up as "centered on the farcical idea of a State bank lending money [to farmers] at 2 percent; the mantra that scrapping all arts, Aboriginal and multicultural government funding will help the lot of Anglo-Aussie battlers; a relaxation of gun control laws and a gospel of protectionist, interventionist economics." The big-business daily concluded that "a majority Labor government would be better for Queensland than a Coalition reliant on One Nation support."

Hanson attacks Aboriginal rights
In a June 2 speech in federal Parliament, Hanson accused the government and the ALP of conspiring to set up "a number of taxpayer-funded sovereign Aboriginal states." She said people were pretending to be Aboriginal to "claim a share of the booty of the native title scam as well as various other public-funded perks not available to other Australians." Hanson pledged to abolish all indigenous-specific funding and "the nonsense and inequity that is native title." Native title refers to recent legal recognition of limited Aboriginal land rights.

Hanson added, "Queenslanders will be the first Australians ... to have the chance to elect a real alternative to the multicultural and politically correct Labor and Coalition parties, whose [policy] fulfills the agenda of overseas interests, not ours."

As opinion polls began to reveal the scale of support for One Nation, Prime Minister John Howard was forced to condemn Hanson's speech, calling it "verg[ing] on the deranged" and "fanning racist sentiment."

All parties in bourgeois politics here encourage supporters to rank their opponent parties according to what each party sees as in its interests. The voting system in Queensland allows a primary vote to be cast, with the option of ranked votes once the primary vote has been counted. The coalition parties' "direction of preferences" to One Nation ahead of Labor sparked an outcry in the liberal bourgeois press. Labor how-to-vote cards handed out on election day put the ultraright party last.

Despite hopes they could stem hemorrhaging to the right, the National and Liberal preferences to One Nation had the opposite result. Paul Everingham, former state Liberal Party president and former chief minister of the Northern Territory, in opposing the decision, called One Nation "something ... equivalent to a fascist party."

Hanson told a crowd of supporters in Rosewood, a rural Queensland town, "Over the last couple of years, the things that I say you can start to see them implement as policies." She pointed to her calls to reduce immigration, to make the unemployed work for the dole, and for harsher criminal sentences. Less than a week after the prime minister had attacked Hanson over her call for cutting off Canadian pork imports as "cutting off our nose to spite our face," the Cabinet responded to this very pressure by retreating on its supposed free-trade stance and pledging A$8 million (A$1=US$0.59) in assistance to the pig industry. Hanson immediately claimed credit for this U-turn.

Meanwhile representatives of Queensland's 6,400 canegrowers, many of them family farmers, expressed concern at any exacerbation of trade disputes with Canada, which could affect A$250 million in sugar exports.

Hanson is the national mouthpiece for an organization that now claims 275 party branches and a membership of 25,000 mainly across the rural hinterland of Australia. She has dismissed as "rubbish" claims that One Nation's ranks have been swelled by cadres of armed militias as well as other long-standing ultrarightist groups.

However, the national head of the AUSI Freedom Scouts militia, Ian Murphy, said that he had personally organized a public meeting for Hanson during her visit to western New South Wales last October. Murphy said, "We make no secret that we are people who support One Nation all the way, but to label us extremist is ridiculous."

Despite ruling-class fears of One Nation's potential destabilizing impact nationally, Howard continues to push for an early federal election.

Ron Poulsen, Communist League candidate in the upcoming federal elections and member of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, said, "Pauline Hanson's One Nation party plays on the fears and insecurities, especially in the middle classes, born out of economic depression. The rise of One Nation is not the product of electoral maneuvers. Hanson's One Nation scapegoats Aborigines and Asian immigrants to deflect anger from the real cause of unemployment and worsening living conditions-the tiny minority of super-rich capitalist ruling families and their exploitative, crisis-ridden system.

"Howard's government can't answer Hanson's demagogy because it has accelerated attacks on Aboriginal and immigrants rights, attacked health care, aged care, and education, and led an assault on the union movement. Nor can Hansonism be answered by the deep economic nationalism of the trade union officialdom and the Labor Party. As a candidate in the elections I will counter the nationalism of all the other parties with a program that stands for international working-class solidarity-the only way to combat the effects of the capitalist crisis."

Joanne Kuniansky is a member of the Australian Workers' Union (AWU).  
 
 
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