Courier Mail Perspectives, 8th August 1998
By Lawrie Kavanagh
Premier Peter Beattie faces a tough task trying to dispel the myth of racism when he visits Asia for that reason soon.
Queensland has had its share of racists, probably in direction proportion to those in Asia, and nothing will change that here or there. But we have become easy targets thanks to a major political scare campaign among migrant communities as well international media beat-ups since the emergence of Pauline Hanson.
Unfortunately ours will be a continuing saga thanks to the outpourings of self-seeking politicians, social engineers, agenda-laden minorities and the un-Australian riff-raff who protest so violently against Hanson.
Where have they been in recent years to have missed the discontent simmering in street-level Australia not against migrants and Aboriginals as some parties gleeflully promote worldwide but against policies that have allowed the Loony Left minority to build their visions of paradise Down Under?
The most distinguishing feature of that paradise broadly can be covered by political correctness, with its gospel that everything traditional Australia stands for, dare I say that made this country one of the most desirable in the world today, is wrong… Christianity, family values, national pride, self responsibility, personal and community discipline, punishment that fits the crime and new freedom of speech.
Other national issues such as the almost wilfull gutting of the bush towns and industries, unemployment and economic rationalism have added to the general discontent. But the politically correct clamps that our social engineers have slapped on our traditional values are at the core.
The one thing keeping the lid on the simmering discontent over the years was the lack of a fearless voice from someone at the end of the tether, someone with a ton of guts and absolute disregard for what an opponent might say or do.
In other circumstances it might have been a Peter Lalor, a Ned Kelly, a Charles Perkins. In these circumstances it happens to be a fish and chip shop lady named Pauline Hanson… inarticulate, gutsy Hanson who happens to be telling some home truths that set a majority of street-level Australian heads nodding in agreement.
Unfortunately it is a point missed by most of her opponents. The truth is that Hanson and her mob are not changing the face of Australian politics today. Ordinary, suburban Australian tax payers are. They've finally found the strength to stand up and be counted against the politically correct, the social engineers who have won control of this country by stealth over the past quarter of a century.
Hanson isn't a latter day Jesus Christ. She's just one disgruntled tax payer who can see the white anting of values established by many hardworking generations such as herself and she's had the guts to stand up and complain loud and clear, rallying many others. Mostly ordinary people didn't exactly welcome her as a saviour when she first hit the news a couple of years ago but since then her opponents' most un-Australian denunciations have been to her eternal advantage.
What started out as an interesting political diversion has become a significant political revolution and, if that revolution knocks the backside out of those who downgrade our traditions, then bully for Hanson.
Sure she doesn't have the answers to this nation's major problems, but who does? How often have politicians of all parties led us down one path of reformation or another, only to tell us without apology years later that it was the wrong path and bad luck for the personal cost of tax payers?
Former Whitlam minister John Button touched on the subject last week - that major mistakes had been made by the Labor government - but that's the way it goes.
In 10, 12 or 20 years, when its safe for governments to reflect on failures that have cost taxpayers their jobs, their families and sometimes their lives, you simply shrug your shoulders, look concerned and say in hindsight you wouldn't do it again.
I get that feeling when I think about honest hard-working Australians who have lost their jobs or businesses because of wrong decisions by all governments - such as those of the clothing and footwear industries and now the farmers. Sacrificial lambs to the altar of academia's grand theories and best guesses. In such changing times, sacrifices must be made… as long as it's not me or mine.
It's all about moving with the times, see… globalisation, rationalisation, big pictures, pictures so big they obliterate individuals. Huh! What's that? Individuals? Oh yeah, they're those silly things like ants scurrying off screen. They didn't quite make it to the big picture. Well they're only workers after all.
But who am I to talk? It was me and people like me who gave the Loony Left its biggest boost in Australian when we voted for Whitlam back in 1972. I couldn't see the potential for social engineers with Loony Left agendas back then. But as a friend pointed out recently, Whitlam was following the liberating agendas for a brave new world set by the United Nations more than 20 years before.
Who would have imagined back then that the brave new world would be as socially disastrous as it is today, with drug addiction so out of control we seriously debate the distribution of free drugs to addicts; or that we consider school athletics so suspect we talk about testing them for performance-boosting drugs, as discussed this week?
Who would have believed that the criminal system would have gone so soft as to allow violent, repeat rapists and murderers of school girls back into so-called society again?
But its not all doom and gloom in my world. I got a laugh out of reading something retired judge Bill Carter wrote her last week. Referring to a column I wrote on serial rapist and schoolgirl killer Lloyd Fletcher's indefinite sentence, he wrote: "One such journalist recently in this newspaper described a fellow human being, albeit a serious offender, as a 'maggot'. One can only wonder how such invective can assist the discussion."
Really? Well, Bill old son, up where you belong you may call Fletcher what you damn-well please. But down here we call a spade a spade. I must admit, though, that your concerns for fellow human beings have caused me to reassess my invective comparisons.
Thus do I apologise abjectly to maggots everywhere. I'm sorry little fellas. You don't deserve to be cast as low as such sub-human scum.