Opinion: Pauline Hanson’s reaction to Fraser Anning speech speaks volumes

WHEN you can get Pauline Hanson to side with racial tolerance you have done more than just gone too far. Fraser Anning’s address was a hate speech that borders Apartheid, writes John McCarthy.

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FOR once I agree with Pauline Hanson and that makes me shudder. But she was right when she labelled the maiden speech by one-time party colleague Fraser Anning as appalling.

When you can get Pauline Hanson to side with racial tolerance you have done more than just gone too far.

Senator Anning earned just 19 votes at the last election. It wasn’t enough to win a seat. Instead he rode into the senate on Malcolm Roberts’ dual nationality woes and Pauline Hanson’s coat tails.

That result and the fact that he ditched One Nation immediately on entering the Senate speaks volumes for the man.

One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson said Fraser Anning went too far. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

That he called himself a Joh-man and a believer that the Bjelke-Petersen Government was a golden era shows how he prefers to be ignorant to overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

His maiden speech to Parliament this week was not an exercise in free speech, it was hate speech from a man who represents few and is little more than the personification of Paul Keating’s sledge when he called the Senate “unrepresentative swill’’.

But Anning’s call for a return to the White Australia policy and the rejection of Muslim immigration will serve as an enabler for those who believe that as a nation we cannot be improved by learning from new cultures and accepting that we can share our good fortune.

I shudder to think what he thinks we should do with the thousands of Muslims already here.

I’ve lived through a few waves of immigration: the Italians and Greeks, the Vietnamese and now African and other Asian nationalities. Each one has faced rejection from a section of the community, but I can’t imagine our country without them.

Anning’s claims border on Apartheid and may even embrace it. Every utterance was wrong and should be met with intelligent rebuttal.

I believe Australia is better than Anning’s vision of the nation