Australia was founded on the idea of a ‘fair go’, that we would judge each person on their merits – rewarding hard work and creating opportunities for those willing to use them. Now Australians are asking: ‘What has happened to our country, why are we headed in the wrong direction, why is our nation so divided?’

Over the past decade Australia has experienced a cultural invasion. Our schools, universities, government departments, political parties, media and even major corporations have been overrun by a mutant Left-wing ideology, often referred to as ‘cultural Marxism’.

Many Australians no longer recognise their country and fear for the future of their children and grandchildren. They are worried, rightly so, that we are no longer a land of the fair go.

These problems are prominent in NSW politics and institutions. Our largest state has gone in the wrong direction. We are being ripped apart by divisive identity politics: judging people on the basis of race, gender and sexuality, instead of their individual needs and merit.

With the rise of anti-white racism, people of colour have been set against white people. With the widespread public demonisation of men (much of it encouraged inside NSW Government agencies) gender conflict has become common. This spiteful, corrosive debate is being encouraged under the banner of ‘white male privilege’ – the new racist and sexist language of the Left.

As we saw during the 2017 same-sex marriage debate, Christians are being attacked simply for adhering to long-held religious beliefs. Even Australian sporting stars, such as Margaret Court (who grew up in Albury) and Israel Folau (from South-West Sydney) have been heavily abused and discriminated against.

There was a time on the Left of politics when, if one person was mistreated by state power, just one person was a victim of discrimination, everyone would go to the barricades on their behalf. Now the Left actively targets Christians and straight white men for discrimination.

Leftists claim to support ‘diversity’ in society, yet spend most of their time trying to close down opinions and information that contradict their worldview. Political correctness is an anti-diversity movement, trying to limit diversity of thought, inquiry and opinion. In truth, the Left wants a bland, homogenous society where disagreement is shouted down by the outrage industry and state-sponsored censorship.

Defending Individual Freedom

We hear a lot about ‘minorities’ in politics, but the smallest minority in any society is the individual. One Nation is committed to defending the rights of the individual. We believe in judging people by their personal character and work ethic, by their contribution to Australia and Australian values. We believe in talking honestly about these issues, free from the suffocating PC-censorship of the identity-Left.

One Nation strongly opposes the Left’s attack on personal freedom, its attempt to control society by controlling our language, feelings and behaviour. After the fall of the Berlin Wall (the Left’s failed attempt at economic control) these activists have now marched through the institutions of Western nations, trying to exercise social and cultural control. In this process, Australians are being turned against each other.

Across the public sector, ‘diversity’ employment quotas have been introduced, wiping the principles of merit selection. The best person for the job no longer necessarily gets the job. White men often apply for positions and promotions knowing they have no chance of getting them. Shamefully, their employment prospects are dismissed wearing the label of a ‘stale pale male’.

In emergency and protective services, such as Fire and Rescue NSW, the Australian Federal Police and Defence Force, merit has been abandoned in favour of ‘diversity’. Entry standards have been weakened, especially in the testing of physical strength. This not only discriminates against white men but also imperils public safety.

During his time at the Human Rights Commission, Tim Soutphommasane urged companies in the Sydney CBD to introduce racial employment quotas discriminating against white people. His theory was that if Asians are 10 percent of the Australian population, they should have 10 percent of jobs in the big law firms. He told these companies they had too many white-coloured lawyers.

Yet in a free society, people should be able to chose their own career paths, without a racial commissar like Soutphommasane standing over them. Most Asian families want their children to become doctors, engineers and scientists, not lawyers.

Like most Australians, One Nation deplores this new focus on something as meaningless and superficial as skin colour. Anti-white racism is a political sickness no different to earlier forms of racism such as apartheid and slavery. It should be outlawed. One Nation opposes all discriminatory quotas: in the workplace, the education system, across society. We believe in merit and merit alone.

In August 2018, the NSW Deputy Premier and Leader of the National Party, John Barilaro, lamented how a generation of young men “feel disempowered”. They are fed up with the major parties and will turn against them at the ballot box. This is because Barilaro’s Government actively discriminates against men in its departments and agencies, supposedly as a way of overcoming discrimination against women.

A new wrong is being used to address an old wrong, a nonsensical way of running social justice policy. Instead of fixing this problem and restoring fairness, Barilaro told the media he would focus on drugs and mental health policy. The State Government doesn’t understand the unfairness of its own laws and what needs to be done to fix them.

Across NSW, parents are fearful that their sons can study hard in the education system, achieving good results, but then not get a fair go in life. At universities they are being falsely labeled as ‘sexual predators’ and locked away from those seeking shelter in ‘safe spaces’. It’s a terrible time to be growing up as a young white man in Australia.

Stopping Segregation and Discrimination

We are losing one of the best things about our country: the sense of fairness and the great Australian tradition of rewarding those who work hard and seek self-improvement. The Left used to argue that racism and other forms of discrimination were plain wrong. Now they practice them, against straight white males. They have created new forms of discrimination, supposedly to overcome old forms of discrimination – a self-defeating strategy.

This has inevitably produced bitterness, division and unfairness in our society. It is also entrenching the evil of segregation: separating Australians away from each other on the basis of race, gender, sexuality and religion.

NSW has universities with segregationist safe spaces. Health bureaucrats have tried to create separate hospital waiting rooms for black and white patients. Public swimming pools have practiced Sharia law, with curtained off areas for Islamic women. School students are being encouraged to think of themselves not as Australian citizens but as different racial, gendered and sexual identities.

Unfortunately, Labor, Liberal and the Greens have united in their support for primitive identity politics. In Federal Parliament in October they voted against Senator Hanson’s motion condemning the rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western Civilisation. Apparently they think it’s not okay to be white; that white people are fair game for racism.

This approach was subsequently endorsed by the Labor/Liberal/Nationals/Greens alliance in NSW Parliament. At every turn, they have made the situation worse, further dividing the community along identity lines. Censorship and discrimination now dominate NSW politics.

The Berejiklian Government has introduced a range of identity quotas, including in public service employment, Fire and Rescue NSW, trade-related work on government projects and even the number of women nominated for Australian of the Year awards. Merit has become an after thought.

The major parties believe in PC restrictions on free speech, with Labor even doing this to its own leader, Luke Foley. He is not allowed to say the words ‘white flight’, even though it is an accurate description of how Sydney residents are responding to ethnic enclaves, including in Foley’s own seat.

The party elites have also allowed segregationist ‘safe spaces’ to flourish, weakening the social bonds between people. They have imposed the absurdity of ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘diversity’ training on government employees, plus a range of virtue-signaling trivia, such as ‘purple dress-up days’. Mainstream political views in NSW have been lost.

A Fair Go For All

How did this happen? There was a time when Left-of-Centre politics tried to create a fairer society by focusing on questions of class, income and wealth. Government aimed to improve the opportunities available to poor people, to enable them to lift themselves up in life. It didn’t matter if someone was white or black, male or female, straight or gay, progressive politics waged war on poverty. The goal was to have all citizens living a dignified life, working hard to realise their potential.

This strategy was designed to grow the size of the pie, to increase the number of capable, successful people in society, whereby one person’s self-improvement did not have to be at the expense of another’s. Anti-discrimination laws were enacted so that no one could restrict the legitimate social participation of other Australians.

A decade ago, the Left changed direction. It stopped talking about poverty and instead, focused on identity – personal characteristics that tend to be fixed in life: race, gender and sexuality. It also created a bogey group that needed to be stripped of opportunity, even if they came from a poor background: the white-skinned male.

Instead of growing the pie, identity politics aims to cut it up differently, to reserve slices for people of a particular race, gender and sexuality. This creates a zero-sum game, whereby selected groups can only advance themselves at the expense of others, opening up new divisive fault-lines in society.

As a social justice strategy, this is madness. People can only win if others lose, creating envy and resentment. Social capital and cooperation, once the hope of the Left, are automatically diminished. White males are punished for something they can do nothing about: the way in which they were born. This is the antithesis of fairness.

It is also creating a new public culture of victimhood: that every ‘minority’ is being persecuted by ‘the patriarchy’ or ‘colonialism’ or misogynistic bullies in the workplace, even Federal Parliament House. From the early days of European settlement, one of the defining features of Australian culture was our resilience, our ability to survive the toughest of times. Now we are breeding a generation of Leftist snowflakes, needing ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘safe spaces’ to get through the day without ‘anxiety attacks’.

In Australia in 2018, identity politics is unnecessary. For instance, our Asian population is 10 percent of the country, yet 20 percent of our doctors are Asian. We have been a land of opportunity for any ethnic group wanting to pursue its vocations of choice. Many of the migrant groups that have come to Australia did so to escape the tyranny of the Left in their home country. They now find themselves asking: why has excessive state control and censorship followed them to their new nation.

Similarly, women now comprise more than 50 percent of Australian university graduates and a majority of lawyers, GP doctors, vets, office managers, teachers and public servants – wonderful advances on merit. Progress has also been made in gay and lesbian rights, with that community now enjoying high-than-average levels of education, income, wealth and media participation.

When the Left embraced communism it scored a massive own-goal. Its system of economic control could not generate decent economic growth. In its pursuit of divisive identity politics, it is kicking another own-goal. Its latest attempt at social control is destroying the harmony and cohesion of the Australian people.

One Nation believes in reuniting our country, in ending all forms of discrimination (old and new) and re-establishing fair rules of social justice. This can only be achieved by re-establishing Australian traditions of free speech, religious freedom and merit-based selection. We must defend the timeless ideals and values of our country, our culture and our Western civilisation.

Reforming Human Rights Law

This requires a fundamental rethink of human rights law at State and Federal level. New policies are needed to bring Australians together and restore fairness to our public and civic life. This is one of Mark Latham’s key goals in running for One Nation at the NSW election.

The rights agenda of the 1970s and 80s – passing laws so that ‘minorities’ have equal opportunities in life – is now being misused by the groups it was intended to assist. Having achieved equality, they are now pursuing revenge, attacking those who supposedly oppressed them.

In the 1950s and 60s, Australia had problems of discrimination against women, migrants and homosexuals. The White Australia policy was an obvious example. But then the anti-discrimination laws of the Whitlam and Hawke Governments, combined with improved education access and community attitudes, produced a more tolerant society.

Now, tragically, large numbers of Left activists are using their newfound, privileged place in society to exact retribution, to rub out old enemies. The tables have turned: the oppressed have become the oppressors. This cannot be allowed to continue.

As the philosopher Karl Popper argued, for a tolerant society to survive it must first safeguard its own existence. There is no point in being tolerant if authoritarian forces are allowed to destroy the foundations of freedom and pluralism. Australia is now at this tipping point.

In every forum, at every opportunity, we must challenge the wrongness of identity-Left thinking. The new Left activists take the fundamentalist view that all white men are inherently privileged and, in practice, there can be no such thing as anti-white racism or male vilification.

They believe capitalism is structured in a way that automatically makes white men powerful and as such, any attack on ‘white male privilege’ is justified in evening out power relations in society. Instead of lifting up the disadvantaged, their strategy is to pull down and demonise their chosen identity-group targets.

In truth, the only fair way of running society is to judge people on their individual merit, regardless of race, gender, sexuality and religion. This is why we must fight bigotry and discrimination of any kind.

One Nation believes in a society based on equality of opportunity, not the new Leftist push for equality of identity outcomes. Quotas and other outcome-driven policies are a dangerous trend, as they place too much power in the hands of government and other authority figures seeking to manipulate and control society.

Protecting Religious Freedom

It is sometimes said there are two types of Christians: those who suffer for their religion and those who enjoy it. Today, many Christians are suffering from the reality or fear of Leftist vilification. They are being subject to a campaign of revenge, with gay-Left activists trying to get even for past grievances (real and imagined). New anti-discrimination laws are needed to overcome this problem, protecting traditional ‘majority’ groups as much as perceived ‘minorities’.

Religious freedom should be protected in two significant ways. The first is to outlaw discrimination against people of faith (the Margaret Court case) and attempts to limit their freedom of speech (the Israel Folau case). Importantly, religious free speech laws must also include the legitimate right to criticise any particular religious faith (preventing blasphemy laws).

The second protection is to ensure government laws do not force people of valid religious faith to do things they regard as morally wrong. In public debate, this is often referred to as the case of the Christian baker asked to prepare a cake for a same-sex wedding celebration.

History tells us that when governments have the power to make people do things they regard to be morally wrong, we move one step closer to a police state. Hence no one should be required to participate in gay marriage activities if, by their religious convictions, gay marriage is sinful.

This was a damning flaw in the 2017 Federal same sex-marriage statute. State anti-discrimination laws effectively coerce Christian service providers (such as bakers, dressmakers etc) to participate in gay marriage, for fear of being prosecuted. Religious freedom laws are needed to overcome this persecution.

The key challenge for lawmakers is to carefully define the reach of religious freedom. These provisions can go too far – in the case of Islam, enshrining Sharia Law. No reasonable person, for instance, would want to give full freedom and legislative protection to the way in which the Koran authorises domestic violence.

Nor should religious freedom provisions shield church representatives from the rule of law, such as in child sexual abuse cases. Valid religious faith must be protected, but in a manner consistent with the values and standards of Western civilisation (of which Christianity itself is an important pillar).

Given widespread Leftist attacks on our civilisation, it is timely to codify and defend in legislation the values and cultural practices of the West. This includes ideals such as freedom, tolerance, meritocracy, the rule of law and the importance of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Unfortunately, the Turnbull/Morrison Government has mismanaged the politics of the Ruddock Review into religious freedom, allowing it to morph into a debate about gay rights, rather than Christian rights. One Nation will overcome this shortcoming in NSW, with new legislative protections of religious freedom.

Under our laws, cases like Jason Tey (a wedding photographer persecuted by the West Australian Equal Opportunity Commission for saying he didn’t support gay marriage) will be avoided in NSW. So too, it will be illegal to discriminate against individuals and enterprises that do not believe in gay marriage by trying to drive them out of business. This will prevent cases like the closure of White magazine (a wedding publication that refused to feature gay couples).

So far, since the passage of the Turnbull Government’s same-sex marriage laws in December 2017, there have been at least 50 matters where Christians experiencing or fearing persecution have required legal assistance from groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby. Unfortunately, the flip side of gay couples enjoying their wedding ceremonies has been vicious, unnecessary attacks on those who chose not to participate and not to believe in this form of marriage.

NSW Anti-Discrimination Board

The main human rights body in NSW, the Anti-Discrimination Board (ADB), has become an agent of identity politics. In its own recruitment practices, it has 91 percent female staff and nine percent male (2016/17 Annual Report). If it doesn’t believe in equal opportunities in its own office, how can it create them across NSW? It is supposed to stamp out gender and other forms of discrimination, yet it is biased in its own employment policies.

This is typical of the one-way nature of today’s human rights framework. Under the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act 1977, for instance, it is “not against the law to discriminate against people who are not homosexual or not transgender; it is only against the law to discriminate against people who are homosexual and/or transgender.”

Under its special exemption powers (making certain kinds of racial and sexual discrimination lawful), the ADB actually spends more time facilitating discrimination in NSW (against straight white men) than preventing it. It throws exemptions around like confetti. This policy (also known as ‘special measures’) is being used by human rights bodies, Federal and State, as a backdoor way of legalising discrimination against groups they regard as unworthy ‘majorities’.

The ADB has also entertained serial complainants who have made the lives of innocent people a legal nightmare (such as action against Bernard Gaynor, even though, as a Queenslander, he is not even a NSW resident). This is another example of human rights law being abused, for the purpose of waging revenge against ‘majority’ groups.

The ADB, like its counterpart, the Australian Human Rights Commission, has been an unelected activist body, trying to recast the nature of civil society. In NSW the meaning of ‘sexual harassment’, for instance, has been redefined to include ‘staring’, ‘wolf whistling’ and ‘comments about a person’s physical appearance’. The ADB also has an outreach program, conducting seminar and training for the promotion of divisive identity politics and segregationist thinking.

It’s a leading example of how traditional anti-discrimination laws, aimed solely at the protection of so-called minorities (from the 1960s/70s), have become moribund, even counter-productive. Given the power of censorious elites in our institutions, ‘majorities’ require protection, no less than minorities.

It should be illegal to prevent another person’s legitimate economic, social or political participation. Existing anti-discrimination bodies and laws are no longer fit for this purpose. A new legal framework is needed, with universal pro-participation safeguards (incorporating traditional areas of concern, such as disability rights and age discrimination).

In the old human rights framework, ‘minority’ groups were protected from discrimination, based on their identity characteristics. In the new framework, all citizens must be able to participate in society, according to the principles of personal freedom, merit and the prevailing values of Western civilisation. Any attempt to obstruct this process – that is, to bring harm to others – should be outlawed by government.

One Nation Policy

We will broaden and modernise the role of the Anti-Discrimination Board by ensuring it protects the rights of all NSW residents from censorship and discrimination, not just selected ‘minorities’. We want the ABD to be a body that unites people, rather than dividing them on identity grounds. It needs to bring people together, to play a role in rebuilding community harmony and cohesiveness. We need to restore the principles of merit and equal opportunity in NSW.

Under One Nation policy, the ABD will be overhauled so that it exercises 10 key powers and functions: