Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Greens are panicking in Australia in the wake of the recent cliffhanger Federal Election, as the likelihood grows that climate skeptic Pauline Hanson, who has repeatedly demanded a Royal Commission into Climate Change, will control the balance of power in the new Australian Senate.

Australia Is Being Swamped By Climate Change Deniers With Pauline Hanson looking certain to return to parliament, there’s never been a worse time to be the Great Barrier Reef, writes Liz Conor. Fellow Austraiyans. If you are reading me now it means that I have become murderous. Murderously, apoplectically incensed. Pauline Hanson appears to have picked up a spot in our Senate at the time of writing, possibly even two or more. She will represent Queensland in our House of Review, where our nation’s proposed laws are rejected or amended. And it’s not a three-year term. Unless Turnbull (potentially newly rolled into Prime Minister Morrison out of revenge for the LNP’s slashed majority) finds some other spurious reason to call a double dissolution, Hanson’s term is Six. Six. Six. Hanson will make extravagant use of the Senate’s committee system, already proposing royal commissions into Islam and climate science. How in chrissname do you conduct an inquiry into one of the three major world religions? Imagine the terms of reference. Are there too many believers? Should they perform the pilgrimage to Mecca? Are Humans superior to Angels? Will the Australian Royal commission into erm, Islam require the seventh-century originals of its foundational documents be tendered – the Qur’an, hadith and tafsir? And why does Hanson even have an opinion on climate science? Why are racists climate deniers? Does Hanson have doubts about enlightenment empiricism? Logical positivism? The verification of Authentic Knowledge? Or has she, like most climate deniers and obstructers, featherbedded her campaign with undeclared funds from fossil fuel conglomerates? … believe we are in danger of being swamped by Caucasians, tax evasions and Australasians. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos, and do not assimilate. We are bringing in people from Oxley at the moment. There was a huge amount coming to our polling booths, and they’ve got diseases, they’ve got BIAS. …

Read more: https://newmatilda.com/2016/07/04/australia-is-being-swamped-by-climate-change-deniers/

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the climate enthusiast who toppled Australia’s former PM Tony Abbott, used a provision of the Australian Constitution to trigger a double dissolution election – a simultaneous election of both federal Senate and Representative seats.

Turnbull’s intention was to secure a clear mandate. But it all went wrong for him – the election turned into a massive backlash from former Abbott and Palmer United supporters, who defected in droves to minor parties like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Unless Turnbull is really lucky, and the remaining uncounted votes go his way, Turnbull’s only real hope is to cling to power as leader of a fractious minority government, with “support” from people who despise him.

So who is Pauline Hanson? Hanson exploded onto the political scene in 1996, when she won the seat of Oxley in Brisbane on a tsunami of populist right wing revulsion at the unwavering political correctness of mainstream political parties. She is one of Australia’s most colourful and well known political characters. She has been repeatedly accused of racism because of her strong views about Islam and uncontrolled immigration. She was convicted of electoral fraud in 2002, but the conviction was overturned in 2003 on appeal.

Her return to politics, this time as a Federal Senator, in a likely pivotal political position, is being greeted with horror by greens and socialists who frankly have been having a very bad year, since the “high” point of the hollow Paris agreement.

Share this: Print

Email

Twitter

Facebook

Pinterest

LinkedIn

Reddit



Like this: Like Loading...