CANBERRA, Australia — A closely-fought Australian election has brought with it the revival of a fringe party led by right-wing politician Pauline Hanson, showing the country is not immune to the anti-immigration mood sweeping parts of Western Europe and the United States.
While Hanson’s party won only 4.2 percent of the primary vote for Australia’s upper house, that’s enough under the country’s preferential voting system to secure her a Senate spot and the chance to influence legislation. Another One Nation Party candidate may also win a Senate seat.
Hanson, who wants a Royal Commission into Islam and a ban on the wearing of the burqa in public, benefited from a protest vote against the major parties. She was also helped by the implosion of another small conservative group, the Palmer United Party, and needed only half the usual votes to win a seat because of vote- counting peculiarities created by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to force an early election.
“We’re in danger of being swamped by Muslims,” Hanson, 62, said in May, even though Muslims make up just 2 percent of the population. “If you’re going to bury your head in the sand about it, you’re a fool.”
Hanson’s influence over the next government remains to be seen, and the Senate makeup is not yet final. During her brief stint in Parliament 20 years ago, the Liberal-National coalition government of the time criticized her views on Asian immigration as misguided and dangerous, and she faded from view as her party imploded in infighting.
But as governments around the world battle concern about refugees and immigrants, fueled in part by rising income inequality and unemployment, Hanson’s anti-Asian, anti-Muslim rhetoric may be harder to shut down.
“Disillusionment with the major parties is clearly a trend in Australia, as elsewhere,” said Anne Tiernan, a political scientist at Brisbane’s Griffith University. “They will have to be careful in the way they deal with Hanson and will need to walk a fine line between understanding, but not accepting, some of the more extreme views she represents.”
The ruling coalition led by Turnbull and the Labor Party opposition led by Bill Shorten secured their lowest share of the primary vote since World War II. Some of that vote went to left-leaning parties like the Australian Greens, and a centralist group led by Senator Nick Xenophon. But it’s Hanson who has won most of the attention.
Turnbull has claimed victory, even as he reaches out to independent and small party lawmakers. His challenge will be soothing voters dissatisfied with the major parties while avoiding knee-jerk populist policy responses that curtail needed immigration. The stance of Hanson and some other smaller parties against foreign investment may also damage Australia’s international reputation.
Hanson’s previous stint in politics help trigger a hardening of government policy over immigration. Prime Minister John Howard created detention camps for would-be migrants arriving by boat. Now both the coalition and Labor back the policy, along with turning back boats laden with asylum seekers.
“Do you want your children and grandchildren to be living under Sharia Law and treated as a second-class citizen with no rights?” Hanson’s party says on its website, calling for the installation of surveillance cameras in mosques and Islamic schools. Multiculturalism has prevented people from “assimilating into Australian society — exactly what was done and admitted to in England,” it claims. Hanson declined to be interviewed for this story.
