BY BOB AIKEN
SYDNEY, Australia - As many as 10,000 high school students across Australia took part in a classroom walkout to protest racism July 24. Targeting ultrarightist politician Pauline Hanson's attacks on Aborigines and Asian immigrants, students in eight cities organized street marches, including one of around 2,000-3,000 in Sydney.

In Brisbane the high school action took place July 28, with more than 2,000 rallying with hundreds of Aborigines in a joint protest outside the first session of the newly elected Queensland Parliament.

Students as young as 12 skipped school to take part in the protests, which were called by Resistance, the youth group associated with the Democratic Socialist Party. A furor erupted over their right to protest.

David Oldfield, a key Hanson advisor, red-baited the students. "I sort of see it like we're almost fighting communism," Oldfield declared. He denounced "evil forces" at work "who uphold Castro's Cuba as ... a socialist workers' paradise."

One Nation Queensland Member of Parliament Shaun Nelson, a 25-year-old former soldier, denounced the young protesters as "being subjected to child abuse by communists, people we fought against in wars."

Pauline Hanson's One Nation party won 23 percent of the vote in the Queensland elections June 13, with 11 of its candidates elected to the 87-seat Parliament. Peter Beattie, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader in Queensland, subsequently formed a government with the backing of one Independent MP.

Buoyed by their success in the Queensland election, One Nation mouthpieces have also sharpened their attacks on Aborigines, immigrants, social welfare, "free trade," and "corruption" in politics.

Protests dog Hanson rallies
One Nation's gains have also sparked a renewal of the spirited protests that have dogged Hanson's rallies, particularly as she toured nationally July 12-22 to promote One Nation candidates in federal elections that Prime Minister John Howard may call soon.

Some 300 picketed Hanson's meeting in Perth, Western Australia, July 12. Small country towns like Kiama, in New South Wales, and Sale, in Victoria, saw protests of several hundred. Hanson canceled a Melbourne speech July 19 as 2,000 protested outside. About 3,000 people, led by hundreds of high school students, rallied in Bendigo, a country town in Victoria, July 21, forcing Hanson to cancel a "meet-the- people" walk through the town center. Some 200 protesters, most of them Aboriginal, were attacked by police at Hanson's July 22 meeting in Echuca, a small town on the Victoria-New South Wales border .

"Its been very emotional for me to see these young Aboriginal people having to stand up for themselves like this," Elizabeth Hoffman, an elder of the local Yorta Yorta people, said after the Echuca protest. "To me its very sad to see people who are our friends and neighbors and people we do business with, going to this meeting with that woman [Hanson]."

Around 3,000 marched in Sydney August 1 in a protest against racism endorsed by the New South Wales Labor Council, the district branch of the Maritime Union of Australia, the National Union of Students, and Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Filipino community organizations.

The anger of protesters has been focused on a series of reactionary probes that Hanson has made in recent weeks as she moves to carve out new space in national politics.

Hanson has campaigned against any kind of affirmative action for Aborigines despite Aboriginal unemployment being four times the national average and infant mortality five times higher. Aboriginal families are 16 times more likely than the general population to be homeless.

During her national tour, Hanson called for a new inquiry into the government's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, denouncing it as "a corrupt organization run by an Aboriginal Mafia." ATSIC channels government grants for a wide range of programs, including in health, housing, education, training, and "work-for-the-dole" schemes.

One of the first acts of the Howard government was to carry out a much-publicized audit of ATSIC-funded organizations. Despite finding few irregularities, it reduced ATSIC's budget and financial powers.

Attack on Aboriginal rights
In a speech in Adelaide July 14, Hanson also launched a broadside against the 1967 referendum in which more than 90 percent in every state of Australia voted to recognize Aborigines as equal citizens. "If Australians knew today what was foreshadowed for them, they would have thought twice about casting that vote," she declared. "The pendulum has gone too far the other way."

Attacks on single mothers featured in Hanson's speeches, as she declared that she would "really come down" on single mothers on welfare who had another child.

When 16-year-old Kelly MacDonald, baby in arms, confronted Hanson over these statements during a "meet-the-people" walk in Sale, Victoria, July 20, Hanson lectured her that, "You have to be responsible for your own body.... You can't expect the taxpayer to fund bringing more children into the world." MacDonald was unimpressed.

One Nation's policy on immigration, released July 1 at a Canberra press conference by Hanson and One Nation's Victorian convener Robyn Spencer, a former leader of Australians Against Further Immigration, calls for zero net immigration. As well, refugees would be deported once "the danger is resolved," Spencer said.

Family reunion would be restricted to countries with "adequate transferable social security," the policy states, and immigration "must not significantly alter the ethnic and cultural make-up of the country."

After Hanson's July 19 speech in Melbourne was canceled on the advice of police, Spencer declared that the cops should have used pepper spray and water cannon to disperse the protesters.

Spencer railed, "One wonders who now controls our police force. Is it Labor? After all, the force is now heavily unionized. Or do they conform to political direction from another side?" One Nation has made big inroads into support for the conservative Liberal-National coalition but is also targeting seats held by the ALP.

In face of One Nation's electoral gains in Queensland and their fear that this would be repeated nationally, Howard and Independent Sen. Brian Harradine made a deal on the Native Title Amendment Bill, which passed the Senate July 8. Harradine, who initially voted with the ALP and the minor capitalist parties to block the legislation in December 1997, admitted that he "blinked" at Howard's threat to call an election over the issue. For his part, Howard fears that his legislation, dubbed the "10-point plan," which guts newly won recognition of limited Aboriginal land title on pastoral leases, has been outflanked to the right by what Hanson describes as her "one-point plan: abolish native title." Extensive cattle and sheep grazing and mining activity takes place on pastoral leases, issued by state governments, which cover 40 percent of the Australian continent. One Nation's electoral successes and the Senate's approval of the "10- point plan" may mean an early federal election is less likely.

While capitalist farmers and graziers and mining companies were part of the discussions on the deal, no Aboriginal representatives were consulted this time nor even informed of the deal before it was announced. Noel Pearson, a prominent Aboriginal negotiator, declared that Blacks were left "out on the woodheap."

In a fight that combines opposition to uranium mining and support for Aboriginal land rights, hundreds have traveled to the remote protest camp at Jabiluka-some 155 miles east of Darwin-since March 23. The campaign aims to stop the construction of a second uranium mine on Aboriginal land in Kakadu National Park.

Northern Territory police have made a total of 380 arrests to date, including Yvonne Margarula, the senior traditional owner of Jabiluka. Protesters who have been charged with "criminal damage" face jail under the Northern Territory's draconian mandatory sentencing laws, which set out 14 days' imprisonment for a first offense.

Bob Aiken is a member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union.  
 
 
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