David Penberthy: Senator Fraser Anning deserves the fullest form of scrutiny

The horror of Christchurch reminds us that is our job to describe people for what they are, David Penberthy writes. And Senator Fraser Anning is a man who deserves the fullest form of scrutiny, be it from the media, the police and our intelligence services.

• Anning attacked with egg during anti-immigration rally
• PM vows censure Senator Fraser Anning over NZ comments

To get a bleakly accurate sense of the character of the man, it’s worth looking at the exact timing of the notorious press release issued by Senator Fraser Anning on Friday.

It wasn’t issued “in the wake of” the Christchurch attack.

It was issued in real time with the extent of the atrocity already apparent. It was issued at the exact moment NZ’s Canterbury District Health Board took the unprecedented step of implementing a mass casualty plan to deal with the staggering trauma caused by this act of terror.

It was issued when it was obvious that dozens of people had died, and that their number would include not just men but women and children such as three-year-old Mucad Ibrahim, the most heart-wrenching of the human faces of this outrage.

It was issued when the rest of the world was starting to process the horror, when our country was starting to grapple with shameful discomfort at the fact that the terrorist was one of ours.

In summary, it said: Cop that, you deserved it.

Two New Zealanders comfort each other in Christchurch. Picture: AFP

At a time when it is hard to find anything positive to say, Fraser Anning may have inadvertently done the civilised world a favour over the past 72 hours.

In the same way that the horror of Christchurch is uniting Muslims, Christians and people of other faiths and no faith under a common desire for peace, the putrid nature of Anning’s statement and the conduct of his gang of supporters over the weekend has brought a keen focus on the true threat posed by white supremacist terror both here and abroad.

As Jacinda Ardern put it so succinctly, despite what Donald Trump says, there is a mountain of evidence that this type of thought and activity is on the rise.

In terms of its capacity to claim innocent lives, there is no moral or material difference between an ISIS-inspired attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester and the methodical slaughter of Muslim families quietly at prayer in NZ.

People stop to observe a minute's silence in St Ann's Square as a mark of respect to the victims of the May 22 terror attack at the Manchester Arena. Picture: AFP.

Anning is a former One Nation senator who was elected on a countback after the 2016 election, at which he polled just 19 votes (or 18 votes if you preclude the fact that he voted for himself.)

Pauline Hanson was number one on the Queensland Senate ticket but her number two, Malcolm Roberts, fell foul of the Constitution after it emerged he was a British dual citizen, meaning third-placed Anning filled the vacancy for Robert’s position.

After turning his back on One Nation after falling out with Hanson — and also regarding the party as too progressive — Anning used his maiden speech to invoke the Jewish Holocaust, where he called for Muslims to be banned from entering Australia via “the final solution” of a popular vote on immigration.

Anning’s use of the historically loaded term “the final solution” — the descriptor used by the Nazis for the extermination of six million Jews — sparked discussion as to whether he had used the term in ignorance, or whether he was in fact a seriously dangerous and paid-up right wing extremist.

His conduct since that maiden speech bolsters the second thesis.

In January of this year I locked horns with Fraser Anning after he was afforded an uncritical platform to discuss his attendance at the protest at Melbourne’s St Kilda beach, ostensibly against the scourge of gang violence.

Anning flew at taxpayers’ expense from Brisbane to Melbourne — business class — to attend the rally in St Kilda.

Far from being a simple gathering of citizens concerned about crime and safety, the protest was in fact one of the most well-organised gatherings of far right figures Australia has seen.

Its chief sponsors were Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, who describe themselves as patriots.

Cottrell and Erikson were convicted and fined by magistrates in 2017 for inciting contempt and ridicule of Muslims by making a video in which they beheaded a dummy with a toy sword in a protest against the building of the Bendigo mosque.

Footage from the St Kilda rally showed multiple images of men wearing skinhead regalia, actual and stylised swastikas and performing Nazi salutes.

Anning claimed that every one of these men were “left-wing activists” trying to discredit the rally, an implausible claim, but one that was accepted as fact by a few isolated members of the media.

Anyone still in doubt about the true nature of Anning and his operation should study not just his statement of Friday, but the actions of his supporters on Saturday after he was hit on the head with an egg at his Melbourne press conference by 17-year-old Will Connolly.

While no-one should endorse random egg attacks on MPs, or indeed anyone, the ferocity with which Anning and his supporters reacted was off the charts, with the boy held in a chokehold that was so intense that journalists pleaded for the youth to be freed.

One of those who was among the fray was none other than the aforementioned Neil Erikson, the man with a conviction for hate crimes.

Christchurch tells us is it the job of all of us — especially those in the press — to describe these people for what they are.

Fraser Anning deserves the fullest form of scrutiny, be it from the media, the police, our intelligence services.

He has confirmed with his conduct that he is not so much an apologist for right-wing extremism, but a sympathiser for it, in the midst of an event that united the rest of us in disgust and grief.