Hanson a ghastly carbuncle on Australia politics

BY falling for the miserable dog-whistling racism of Pauline Hanson and One Nation, Scott Morrison’s government has been diminished beyond measure, writes Dennis Atkins.

PAULINE Hanson in my opinion is a racist.

She runs a racist party.

She walks into the Parliament wearing a burqa because she wants to set off dog whistles for her miserable supporters in Queensland.

She is the ugly carbuncle on the body politics who runs in elections for one reason only, and that’s to suck public funding out of the system.

Hanson has legally sucked millions of taxpayers’ cash into her pockets over the last two decades, and she is shameless about how she does it.

She games the system and she uses the brutal dog-whistle tactics to increase the pile of dough she can hoover.

She is by any description of modern political behaviour, a shocker.

Now she has kicked the Government of Scott Morrison in the goolies, and boy oh boy, does it hurt the Prime Minister. And he has made the biggest and dumbest tactical move — or series of moves — of his brief time in the big office.

Hanson put her motion that, to use the language of the far-Right white supremacists such as neo-Nazis, it was “OK to be white” on the Senate notice paper more than a month ago.

But when Hanson’s motion hit the Senate floor, the Government sided with Hanson.

For One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson, dog-whistling to racists is a stock in trade. Picture: Lukas Coch/AAP

The leader of the Government in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, led his senators to vote for the white supremacist language of the One Nation dog-whistling filth.

They all lined up, including every Queensland LNP senator — those people who will ask you for your votes in about six months.

Do not reward them.

By their actions, they are supporters of the racist Hanson. The Morrison Government’s Attorney-General Christian Porter fired off a Tweet that said: “The government senators’ actions in the Senate this afternoon confirm that the Government deplores racism of any kind.”

Cormann also tweeted in similar terms. What a shemozzle.

By the morning, when some slightly clearer headed person in the Coalition surveyed the rotting damage that the Liberal and National senators had caused, it was going backwards at 200km/hr.

Senator Pauline Hanson wearing a burka in the senate. Picture: Gary Ramage

The Government was suddenly not in favour of Hanson’s racist bile. Who would’ve thunk it?

This is the biggest self-inflicted wound that Morrison and his supposed genius senior ministers and advisers have suffered.

It’s key that the guy who led this homegrown disaster was Cormann — the guy who buggered up the sneaky campaign to install Peter Dutton with aplomb.

Cormann used to be a man of stature and an almost unimpeachable figure in the wheeling and dealing of Canberra politics.

Not any more.

He’s now a diminished figure who has little, if any, authority and this Hanson racism funfest move has reduced what pride he might have had to a big bag of shame.

This has been a bruising few weeks for the Coalition, and this Hanson racism dance has stripped the good work the Prime Minister has done to settle things down in the past few weeks.

Minister for Finance Mathias Cormann and Minister for Trade Simon Birmingham during the debate on Senator Pauline Hanson's "OK To Be White" motion in the Senate chamber at Parliament House this week. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Ministers look weaker than they did, especially Dutton, the Home Affairs mega security boss minister.

He stands up in Parliament and attacks the Labor Party on asylum seekers, but where he once managed to land some heavy hits, he is now the man with a wet lettuce.

Dutton was supposed to be the dirty-deed guy under Malcolm Turnbull who would take the hard man act to Labor and use his ex-cop nasty face to scare people.

Now he looks like a lolly thief in a suburban 7-Eleven.

This dance with Hanson’s racism has not just wounded Cormann, it has also stripped paint off Attorney-General.

He has lost any moral authority and can’t swagger up to the despatch box with his usual practised lines.

He has gone from the nation’s chief law officer to a suburban solicitor looking for a brief.

Morrison looked like a better political operator than his sometimes clunky predecessor Turnbull, but that notion is now in the dustbin of national politics.

Forget it, Scott. This is the big league and you’re not measuring up.

Don’t mix with racists.

Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor.