Murray Goot | Pauline Hanson's One Nation : Extreme Right, Centre Party or Extreme Left? | Labour History, 89

Pauline Hanson's One Nation : Extreme Right, Centre Party or Extreme Left?

Murray Goot^*

To what extent do writings about Pauline Hanson or One Nation construct her or her party as a phenomenon of the Right, the Centre or the Left? To what sorts of values — Left or Right — did her major speeches mostly appeal? And where did electors, both those who voted for One Nation and those who did not, place the party ideologically? This article shows how Hanson's politics were frequently characterised as a politics of the Right, though what sort of Right — extreme Right, populist Right, plain Right, and so on — was a matter on which there was no agreement. It demonstrates that while her maiden speech in 1996 and the speech she gave to launch her party in 1997 focused on issues of race and ethnicity — Aborigines, migrants, and multiculturalism — in ways that have come to be associated with the Right, the speech she gave to launch her party's 1998 federal election campaign focused on jobs, an issue more often associated with the Left. The study also uses survey evidence to show that while One Nation was less likely than the Liberal or National Party to be seen as a party of the Right, respondents were more likely to see One Nation as a party of the extreme Right. Yet more than any other party, including the Greens, One Nation was also seen as a party of the extreme Left. The least commonly held view — except by One Nation respondents — was that One Nation was a party of the Centre.

The election of Pauline Hanson to the federal parliament in 1996, the emergence of Pauline Hanson's One Nation the following year, and the success of the party in securing a significant share of the votes, if not of the seats, in ¹9981 led to various attempts — by public intellectuals, by people involved in politics, and by social scientists of various kinds — to make sense of the party's views, or at least to see what sense others made of the party's views. In the process, a wide range of labels was attached to the party. Strikingly, in a 'post-ideological' age, most of those who wrote about One Nation characterised it in ideological terms. Indeed, undeterred by what some see as the increasingly problematic nature of 'left' and 'right', many described One Nation as a party of the Right.

This article is concerned with three aspects of these attempts to understand the ideas One Nation represented. We start by exploring the ways in which One Nation's views were characterised by many of those who have written about the party — critically for the most part — focusing in particular on the way in which it was most commonly characterised as a party of the Right. Among these writers no one described it as a party of the Left. However, the way the 'Right' was specified varied widely; meanings attached to expressions like 'populist right', 'extreme right' or just 'right' were not always clear; and when they were clear, their meanings were not easily distinguished. The only distinction commentators drew with any consistency was that between the 'populist right', used to signify an attack on ethnic privilege with a more specific fear of the threat posed by foreigners to Australian jobs, and the 'extreme right' intended to stress the party's hostility to perceived ethnic privilege.² By contrast, 'extreme right' and 'right' were used in ways that made them virtually interchangeable.

Next we turn to Hanson's major speeches to see how these might be read in left/right terms. Here we focus on three: her maiden speech, the most widely circulated speech ever delivered in the Australian Parliament;³ the speech she made at the launch of her party, in her home town of Ipswich; and the speech she gave to launch One Nation's first federal election campaign. This analysis reveals a marked shift from the early speeches with their attack on governments for promoting Aboriginal 'privilege', for bringing immigrants who do not 'assimilate', and for keeping 'ordinary Australians' out of the debate on multiculturalism (positions often regarded as part of the repertoire of the Right), to a subsequent focus on the need for governments to reduce unemployment and help the private sector generate jobs (positions closer to those traditionally associated with the Left).

Finally, we look at national surveys conducted after the 1998 and 2001 elections to see where respondents, 'ordinary Australians' for the most part, placed One Nation on an 11-point running from left to right. According to these surveys, views were polarised. For many, One Nation was a party of the extreme Right — a view that seems to have reflected Hanson's position on Aboriginal 'privilege' and the treatment of migrants rather than her views on migrant numbers or issues of trade. However, more than any other party, the Greens included, One Nation was also seen as a party of the extreme Left. The least commonly held view — with the important exception of One Nation respondents — was that One Nation was a party of the Centre.

Speaking of Hanson and One Nation

In what sorts of terms were Pauline Hanson and Pauline Hanson's One Nation defined after her success in winning the Labor seat of Oxley in 1996 and the establishment of a party bearing her name in 1997? What sort of labels were used by social scientists (political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and so on), by people in the humanities (in history, cultural studies, even philosophy) and by others who have written on developments in Australian politics (public intellectuals, journalists, politicians) in magazines, academic journals and books?

To find answers to these questions, the present study attempted to assemble everything written about Hanson or One Nation, from 1996 to late 2004, whether in Australia or overseas. The search covered everything from books and chapters in books to journal articles, from lengthy treatments to references in passing, and from the primly scholarly to the openly political. The only things excluded were items published in the daily press; to include that material would have made the task well nigh unmanageable. The result of our collecting everything else — or almost everything else — was a database with over 580 items drawn from books about Australian politics and society, from academic journals, and from magazines ranging from the left-wing Arena to the right-wing IPA Review. Most authors had written one piece; some had written more than one but none more than three. While the database is still growing, it is unlikely that the items still to be added will do much to change the broad picture that has emerged already.

The first thing a search of the database shows are the terms that register most frequently. 'Right', or variations of it, appears as a descriptor in about 40 per cent of the items. References to the party's being 'racist' or inciting 'racism' appears in about a quarter, as do references to its being 'populist' or appealing to 'populism'. Labels that defined Hanson or her party in oppositional terms — 'anti-immigration', 'anti-Asian', 'anti-globalisation', and so on — some of which might be re-assigned to some other cluster, also score highly; they appear in about a third of the items. References to the party's 'nationalist' nature or to Hanson's concern with 'political correctness' appear in roughly a tenth of the items; 'xenophobic' (the occasion of Hanson's famous request to her interviewer to 'Please explain')⁴ surfaces only half as often. Little use was made of terms like 'reactionary', which is slightly puzzling, or of 'fascist', which One Nation was not. Nor was much use made of the various 'neo-'s ('neo-populist', 'neo-conservative', 'neo-fascist', and so on) or 'ultra's (as, for example, in 'ultra-conservative'). A term like 'nativist', which certainly speaks to the party's electoral base, was positively rare.⁵

The second thing the database reveals is that many of the writers used more than one label. About a third of those who described Hanson or One Nation as 'racist' also saw her as part of 'the Right', while a quarter of those who described Hanson or One Nation as part of 'the Right' also saw her as 'racist'. Nearly half of those who described Hanson or One Nation as 'populist' also saw her as 'racist', while about a third of those who used the word 'racist' also saw her or the party as 'populist'. Moreover, of those who thought of Hanson or One Nation as 'antiimmigrant', 'anti-Asian', 'anti-multicultural', or 'anti-Aboriginal', most used the term 'racist' as well.

Third, among those who used the term 'Right' to label Hanson or her party, there was no agreement about the sort of Right they represented. The three most common groups of descriptors were: 'right-wing populist', populism's 'right-wing' or the 'populist' right; 'far right' or 'extreme right', including 'extreme far right'; and 'right-wing' or simply 'right'. Terms like these accounted for almost all the references to the Right; 'new right' (in wide circulation, years earlier, as a label for those who advocated free market economics) and 'lunar right' (a term given currency by columnist Gerard Henderson),⁶ figured hardly at all.

What each of these terms was meant to signify was not always clear or, if clear, not always coherent. According to the most common accounts, 'right-wing populism' combined an attack on ethnic privilege with a more specific fear for the threat posed by foreigners — via immigration or lower tariffs — to Australian jobs. 'Australia's version of a world-wide populist right-wing backlash', represented by Hanson, wrote Quentin Beresford, challenged 'economic rationalism' and 'the so-called special benefits to Aborigines and migrants'.⁷ For Ian McAllister and John Wanna, Hanson's 'right-wing populism' was encapsulated in her 'protectionist and racist slogans'.⁸ For John Frow, who also linked questions of race to the protection of jobs, Hanson's right-wing populism was expressed 'most economically in two statements: "All Australians should be equal", and "All Australians should speak English"', which he interpreted to mean that 'Indigenous people should not claim a separate form of political and economic recognition' and 'Asian migrants are not welcome in this country because they steal jobs from white people',⁹ something Susan Magarey and Susan Sheridan described as 'racist populism', Wiseman as 'nationalist racism', and Boris Frankel as something that appeals to a 'populist racist' element.¹⁰ Jon Stratton, on the other hand, insisted that Hanson's right-wing, populist style was all about asserting 'a core culture that is said to have its roots in Britain and Ireland'.¹¹ However, others used the term as if its meaning could be taken for granted. Thus, for James Mittleman, 'populist politicians' like Hanson benefited from the 'groundswell of right-wing support'.¹² The point, it seems, was not to elucidate the term but to explain why right-wing populism became so popular — as a reaction against 'neo-liberalism and globalisation',¹³ against the 'growing division between "the battlers" — low-income earners, the "working poor" — and welfare recipients',¹⁴ or as a result of Hanson's using 'Cheap and fast media vectors' to articulate 'the feelings of people who no longer believed the policies of the Labor, Liberal, or National parties'.¹⁵

If 'extreme right' or far right' signify something different from 'populist right' or even 'populist racism', it is in the emphasis those who deploy these terms usually place on fear of the ethnic 'other' rather than on the threat to jobs. For federal Labor parliamentarian, Mark Latham, Hanson was a figure of the 'extreme right', someone 'wanting to return Australia to the cultural habits of sameness' represented by 'the monoculture of White Australia'.¹⁶ Writing when One Nation was in electoral decline, John Dryzek 'could perhaps imagine' institutions representing ethnic minorities — not, note, ethnic minorities themselves — being 'expelled from the state' were the 'far right', as represented by One Nation, 'to make greater inroads into Australian government and dismantle multiculturalism'.¹⁷ By contrast, Jennifer Rutherford who used the more emphatic 'extreme far right' in relation to Hanson, believed that Hanson's policies 'if effected, could lead to ethnic cleansing'.¹⁸ Narelle Morris associated Hanson with 'far right' populist politics 'almost entirely based on racial paranoia',¹⁹ while Adi Wimmer focused on Hanson's 'far-right' agenda that included 'stopping immigration, devaluing the arts and discouraging foreign investment' — this last point hardly a way of highlighting One Nation's commitment to protecting Australian jobs.²⁰ Again, others used the term as if its meaning could be taken for granted.²¹ David Hollinsworth's description of Hanson as a 'populist' creating 'extra ideological space on the right' by her '"extremism" is difficult for the reader to decipher, but the inverted commas indicate that he, too, may have harboured doubts about what it was that he was trying to say.²²

'Right' or 'right-wing', the third most frequently used of these highly abstract labels, turns out to be largely synonymous with the 'extreme right' or 'far right'. Thus, Phil Cleary saw 'the emergence of Pauline Hanson from the Right' as giving a national stage to voices 'denigrating blacks and defending White Australia and racist-sounding free speech',²³ though Catherine Lumby added 'the abolition of gun control' to her list of 'conventional right-wing policies like ... the dismantling of funding for minority groups'.²⁴ Inevitably, those who used the label en passant assumed its meaning could be taken for granted.²⁵

What of the terms whose circulation in literature of this kind was much more limited? 'New Right' seems much of a piece with the 'Right' and the 'extreme right'. If Marion Maddox saw Hanson's taking up 'the new right's carefully cultivated cry of "special privileges" to the undeserving', Eva Mackey saw Hanson's case for 'the reduction of the rights of Aboriginal people, the abolition of multiculturalism and changes in immigration policy' not so much as 'new right' as 'extreme new right'.²⁶ But terms like 'radical right' and 'lunar right' are more difficult to pin down. Pat Weller and Liz Young, for example, refer to One Nation 'as a radical right-wing equivalent' to the Australian Democrats and the Greens, without explaining what this means, while for Tim Fischer, a former National Party leader, One Nation attracted the 'lunar right',²⁷ a term that Gerard Henderson used earlier in relation to Holocaust deniers — an antisemitic sub-species of the extreme Right. In this regard, perhaps Fischer intended to highlight something not widely discussed or ever part of Hanson's public pitch.²⁸

If Hanson and One Nation were associated with any number of labels containing the word 'right', none was inscribed with the word 'left'. This is notable for two reasons. First, some of her views on economic policies certainly resonated with the values of the traditional Left: on foreign investment, on the need to build Australian industries, and on the priority that should be given to tackling unemployment. Second, some of her positions on issues of race and ethnicity had been core Labor Party values sometime before; though not core values of the former Communist Party.²⁹

If no one proposed that One Nation be seen as a party of the Left, a number of writers did see Hanson and One Nation as a mixture of Right and Left or as transcending the very idea of Right and Left: Bill Bainbridge argued that 'nationalist conservatism and globalising liberalism', the forces that generated both One Nation and its opponents, 'cut across the old Left-Right division'; Latham also argued that Hanson 'blurred the traditional Left/Right divide'; while for Lumby, Hanson was 'a political force who [sic] defied logic'. Living 'in an era where oppositions like the left and the right ... no longer hold', Lumby argued, Hanson was able to 'garner enormous support by portraying herself as being outside politics'.³⁰

Whatever else the idea of Hanson's transcending Left and Right might have meant, rarely was it taken to mean that One Nation was a party of the Centre. 'The centrists, like Pauline, are against politics', Christopher Kelen maintained, in a singular contribution: 'They merely want to rule'.³¹ To be sure, there were occasional references to One Nation attracting 'people in the middle of the old Right-Left political spectrum',³² but even among those who may have realised that the historical record contains other examples where the language of Left and Right proved inadequate as tools of analysis, few if any either referred to such instances, suggested that terms like Left and Right may not have meant much in Australian politics even before the arrival of Hanson, or seemed familiar with Lipset's idea of 'the extremism of the center'.³³

Hanson's Policy Emphasis

What relationship is there between the things emphasised about Hanson and One Nation here and the sorts of things that Hanson herself chose to emphasise? Did she emphasise issues of race and cultural identity or matters of a more material kind? Was her pitch reasonably consistent, or did her emphasis change? To answer these question we turn to three of her political milestones: her maiden speech, as she herself was happy to call it, delivered in the House of Representatives on 10 September 1996; the speech she delivered at the launch of her party on 11 April 1997; and the speech she gave on 29 September 1998, four days out from the election, to launch her party's campaign. Each of these speeches was delivered more than six months apart, more than enough time for Hanson — described by Robert Manne as 'our first elected anti-politician'³⁴— to behave like any other politician and change elements of her electoral pitch.

There are a number of ways in which the emphasis she gave to the various issues she raised or points she made might be measured: the order in which they were raised, the language she used, the amount of time she spent on each, and so on. Although none of these necessarily excludes any other, we focus on the amount of space she devoted to each issue, in this case counting the number of lines rather than the number of quasi-sentences, which is the preferred measure of the Essex-based Manifesto Research Group.³⁵ The results are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1

Topics emphasised by Pauline Hanson in her Maiden Speech, 10 September 1996, her launching of One Nation, 11 April 1997 and her Policy speech, 29 September 1998 (by the proportion of the lines devoted to each topic)

Topic	Maiden Speech 1996	Party Launch 1997	Policy Speech 1998

	%	%	%
Race and ethnicity
Aborigines, incl. welfare, reverse racism, ATSIC	35.1	5.6	1.5
Immigration, multiculturalism, Australian identity	13.9	27.7	3.5
The Aboriginal industry and multiculturalism		3.1
Equality	0.8	8.2
	49.8	44.5	5.0
Social issues
Family law, child support	6.9
Child poverty			2.7
Crime/substance abuse/family breakdown/safety			3.5
	6.9		6.2
The Economy
Unemployment, jobs incl. apprenticeships	8.2	11.2	34.1
Privatisation, incl. Qantas	3.3
Industry building (manufacturing/mines/ rural) incl. loans			14.0
Interest rates (business)	1.6		0.8
Personal debt	0.8
Standard of living	2.0		7.0
Taxation		0.5	1.2
	15.9	11.7	57.1
External Affairs and Trade
Threats from Japan, China, Indonesia, etc.	4.1	1.0
International organisations, incl. UN/treaties	2.0	3.1
Tariffs, export of jobs	1.6	6.7	8.1
Foreign investment	2.0	5.6	3.9
Foreign debt	1.6
Foreign aid	2.9
National service	2.4
	16.6	16.4	12.0
Political representation
Oxley/Hanson equals mainstream	5.7	7.2
The people against the politically correct/elites		12.8	1.0
Identity politics, including fish & chip shop	3.3
Free speech and political effectiveness			1.2
Liberal or Labor lies/ self-serving leaders		7.2	6.6
Other parties lack of competence			7.0
	9.0	27.2	15.8
Other	1.6		2.7
TOTAL	99.8	99.8	98.8
Number of lines	(245)	(195)	(129)

Source: Helen J. Dodd, Pauline: The Hanson Phenomenon, Brisbane, Boolarong Press, [1997], Appendix 1 and 2 for the 1996 and 1997 speeches; http://pandora.nla.gov.au/nph-arch/O1998-Oct-8/ http://www.gwb.com.au/one nation/s ...accessed 31/05/2005, for the 1998 speech.

Hanson's emphasis in both her 1996 and 1997 speeches was on matters of race and ethnicity: Aborigines, immigration, and multiculturalism. In her maiden speech, nearly half her lines were devoted to matters of this sort. In her speech to launch the party, the proportion was lower but only marginally so. Nor was the emphasis one of space alone. In both speeches these issues were raised within the first few sentences.

Nonetheless, the second speech was not a carbon copy of the first. One difference was the amount of time devoted to Aborigines compared to the time spent on immigration or multiculturalism. The principal focus of Hanson's maiden speech was the special treatment of Aborigines, the issue that had cost her Liberal Party endorsement and which most clearly defined her position at that time. Her comments on Aborigines, including her defence against the charge of racism, accounted for more than a third of what she had to say in Parliament. These comments overshadowed everything else. However. in the speech that launched her party, Hanson's priorities appear to have shifted, with issues to do with immigration (now with a greater stress on the pathologies of immigrants) occupying more than a quarter of her time, and Aboriginal issues taking only a fraction of the time they had occupied seven months earlier; this notwithstanding a more explicit stress on 'equality' and the idea that Aborigines and migrants should to be treated 'the same' as other Australians. The shift in emphasis from Aborigines to immigration is also reflected in the increased emphasis she gave to issues of employment. In her maiden speech she linked immigration to unemployment only fleetingly; in the speech that launched the party the link between unemployment and immigration was made more explicit.

In her maiden speech Hanson not only lamented the high level of unemployment, she also sought an end to further privatisation (though without putting forward any proposal to renationalise), she decried the decline in Australia's standard of living, and she called for lower interest rates (though only for business). Yet, apart from the issue of unemployment and immediately related issues like tariffs, which received passing mention, Hanson devoted little more than a sentence or two to any of these. Less than a fifth of her speech was devoted to unemployment, privatisation, interest rates, and the standard of living combined. At the launch of the party she narrowed her focus even further: the proportion of her maiden speech that she had devoted to these issues was now devoted to one, namely employment (and tariffs), with privatisation, interest rates, and the standard of living passing without mention.

The speech that launched the party was more focused in other ways, too. The Family Law Act and attendant issues, like child support, a feature of her first speech, disappeared. Given that the party depended disproportionately on the votes of men, and that it was sometimes seen as a vehicle for 'angry white men', for whom the workings of the Family Law Courts were a touchstone,³⁶ this is a curious omission. Those who wrote of One Nation as a party of the Right, rarely noted her position on this issue.

In her maiden speech, Hanson railed against the rise of foreign aid and Australia's growing level of foreign debt, the presence of foreign investment (a 'threat' to employment), and the work of the World Health Organisation and the UN. She warned about the threat posed by the populations of Japan, China, Indonesia and other 'neighbours', and about the need for Australia to re-introduce national service (though without making any direct connection between the two). Yet in her speech to the party there was nothing about the issues of foreign aid or foreign debt, only a passing reference to Australia's 'neighbours', and not a word about the need to re-introduce national service.

One other difference between the two speeches is also striking, namely the amount of time devoted to what might be called issues of representation or political identity and the shift in how these were presented. In her maiden speech Hanson presented herself as the authentic voice of Oxley and insisted that the voters of Oxley represented the Australian mainstream. She also attempted to make something of the fact that she had owned a fish and chip shop, had raised children as a sole parent, and had secured an understanding of life that was deeply practical. In her speech to the newly formed party she devoted more than a quarter of her time (three times the proportion of time she had devoted to these matters in the Parliament) to similar themes. Again she presented herself as the voice of the mainstream. But this time she made no reference to her own background. Instead, she emphasised the power the 'politically correct' had wielded in silencing the views of the majority of Australians and the need for people to assert their views. The party she was in the throes of launching was to provide a means by which this might be done.

The speech with which she launched the party's 1998 election campaign was quite different. It may have 'said nothing new', as Margo Kingston observed,³⁷ but in relation to the two earlier speeches the emphasis Hanson gave to the various elements of 'her vision' was quite new. It was a speech in which she said relatively little about race or ethnicity which were seen as an essential element in defining her as a figure of the Right. In the earlier speeches these issues had occupied nearly half her time, now they accounted for very little of it. There was relatively little emphasis on 'the people' versus 'the elites' or the 'politically correct', which had been a hallmark of her status as a populist. A few days out from the election, the emphasis had shifted to the incompetence of rival parties and the self-serving nature of their leadership. The single most important issue Hanson now emphasised was unemployment, or the threat of it, and the need to generate jobs; not jobs created by government 'hand-outs' but jobs that would be created from cheap loans to business, by more apprenticeships, and by doing something about tariffs. For the first time in these speeches the word 'globalisation' made an appearance as she switched the focus to issues associated more closely with the Left.

Left, Right and Centre: Images of One Nation in the Electorate

In terms of Left and Right, where did voters place One Nation? Where did they see it in relation to other parties? Were their views either a product of the party for which they themselves had voted or a product of the way they saw their own ideological position?

To answer these questions we need to turn to the Australian Election Study (AES) surveys conducted by post after the 1998 and 2001 elections in which One Nation ran candidates for the Senate (and most House of Representatives seats) in every State and in each of the Territories. On both occasions the AES informed respondents that 'In politics people sometimes talk about the "left" and the "right"'. It presented respondents with an 11-point scale, running from 0 (left) to 10 (right). And it asked respondents where on the scale they would place themselves and where they would place each of the parties — the Liberals, Labor, the National Party, the Democrats, One Nation, and the Greens.

The Place of One Nation

Clearly, for a substantial number of respondents, the invitation to think about the parties in left/right terms appears to have been just too hard, even meaningless. Of those who filled out the AES questionnaire in 1998, 29 per cent did not respond to the invitation to think of One Nation in left/right terms; in 2001, 28 per cent declined to do so. Figures in relation to the other parties are not very different (Table 2).

Table 2

Placement of each the parties on a left-right scale, Australian Election Study, 1998–2001 (percentages) †

	1998
Party	Left	Centre	Right	DK
Liberal National One Nation Labor Democrats Greens	10 (2) 10 (3) 20 (10) 25 (4) 16 (3) 34 (7)	22 23 14 39 46 30	46 (8) 40 (6) 36 (22) 14 (4) 10 (1) 8 (2)	21 27 29 22 28 28
Total	21 (10)	14	36 (22)	29
n	(1897)

2001
Left	Centre	Right	DK
10 (3) 11 (2) 22 (11) 22 (4) 22 (3) 35 (7)	22 25 15 40 41 28	45 (9) 37 (7) 36 (20) 15 (4) 9 (1) 8 (2)	23 28 28 23 28 28
22 (11)	15	36 (20)	28
(2010)

† Left = 0–3; Centre = 4–6; Right = 7–10.
Proportions placing parties on the extreme left (0) or extreme right (10) are noted in brackets.
Note: Some rows may not add to 100% due to rounding

Question:
'In politics people sometimes talk about the "left" and the "right". Where do you place yourself on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means the left and 10 means the right? Using the same scale, where would you place each of the Federal political parties? Liberal Party, Labor Party (ALP), National Party, Australian Democrats, One Nation, Greens.'

Source: Clive Bean, David Gow, and Ian McAllister, 'Australian Election Study, 1998 [computer file]', Canberra: Social Science Data Archives, Australian National University, 1998; and 'Australian Election Study, 2001 [computer file]', Canberra: Social Science Data Archives, Australian National University, 2002.

Scarcely more than a third (36 per cent) of all respondents placed One Nation on the right of the scale; of these, most (22 per cent in 1998, 20 per cent in 2001) placed it on the extreme right (with a score of 10). A much smaller proportion (14 per cent in 1998, 15 per cent in 2001) located One Nation in or around the middle. However a larger proportion (20 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively) thought of One Nation as a party not of the Right or of the Centre but as a party of the Left. Indeed the proportion that located One Nation somewhere on the left of the scale was just as great as the proportion that located it on the extreme Right.

One Nation in Relation to Other Parties

We can make more sense of these responses by comparing them with what respondents said about each of the other parties. If we do this, the first thing to note is that One Nation was not the party most frequently placed on the Right. That distinction, as Table 2 makes clear, went to the Liberal Party. While just over a third of the respondents saw One Nation as a party of the Right, nearly half (46 per cent in 1998, 45 per cent in 2001) placed the Liberal Party there. Moreover, the junior partner in the Coalition, the National Party, was placed on the Right at least as often as was One Nation: by 40 per cent in 1998 and by 37 per cent in 2001.

Second, while the Liberals were more frequently identified as part of the Right, they (and the Nationals) were much less frequently seen as part of the extreme or far Right; roughly three times as many respondents identified One Nation as part of the extreme Right as identified the Liberals or Nationals. While two-thirds of those who put One Nation on the right of the scale in 1998 (and just over a half who did so in 2001) put it on the extreme Right, only one-in-six (1998) or one-in-five (2001) of those who saw the Liberals as a party of the Right put it on the extreme Right. In short, among those for whom One Nation was a party of the Right, the idea that it was a party of the extreme Right was common; among those for whom the Liberals (or the Nationals) were a party of the Right, the idea that it was a party of the extreme Right was anything but common.

The third point to note is that One Nation was also seen by many respondents as a party of the Left. Indeed, although many more thought of the Greens as a party of the Left than thought this of One Nation, the proportion that put One Nation on the Left was at least as great as the proportion that put the Democrats there and, in 2001, at least as great as the proportion that put the ALP there. Most remarkably, One Nation was more likely than either Labor or the Greens to be seen as a party of the extreme Left. While none of the parties was judged to lie on the extreme Left by more than one respondent in ten, the proportion that put One Nation there was two or three times as great as the proportion that placed Labor there, and half as great again as the proportion that put the Greens there.

More than any other party One Nation was seen as the party of the extreme — located either on the far right of the scale or the far left; nearly a third of the respondents (32 per cent in 1998, 31 per cent in 2001) placed it either at the far right or at the far left of the scale. The corresponding figures for each of the other parties — the Liberals (10 per cent in 1998, 12 per cent in 2001), the Nationals and Greens (9 per cent), Labor (8 per cent), and the Democrats (4 per cent) — pale by comparison.³⁸

One Nation by Party Support

Where respondents placed One Nation, especially in relation to the extreme Left and Right, was partly a function of whether they had voted for the major parties or for the minor parties. The views of Liberal and Labor respondents were virtually interchangeable. In both 1998 and 2001 about a third of these respondents placed the party on the Right, most placing it on the extreme Right; between one-in-six and one-in-eight of these respondents put One Nation somewhere in the middle; and about a quarter thought of it as a party of the Left — not least, intriguingly, by Labor voters (Table 3).

Table 3

Placement of One Nation on a left-right scale, by party for which respondents voted in the Senate, Australian Election Study, 1998–2001 (percentages) †

1998
Vote	Left	Centre	Right	DK	n
Liberal National One Nation Labor Democrats Greens	23 (11) 20 (9) 13 (3) 24 (14) 16 (5) 14 (2)	15 15 36 12 18 21	36 (21) 32 (11) 34 (11) 35 (24) 42 (32) 46 (35)	26 33 15 29 24 19	(588) (66) (128) (622) (257) (43)
Total	21 (10)	14	36 (22)	29	(1897)

2001
Left	Centre	Right	DK	n
24 (10) 20 (12) 13 (5) 25 (13) 20 (10) 15 (9)	17 8 19 14 9 8	33 (17) 44 (20) 46 (16) 33 (20) 54 (35) 62 (45)	26 28 22 28 17 15	(689) (75) (93) (582) (171) (137)
22 (11)	15	36 (20)	28	(2010)

† Left = 0–3; Centre = 4–6; Right = 7–10.
Proportions placing One Nation on the extreme left (0) or extreme right (10) are noted in brackets.
Note: Some rows may not add to 100% due to rounding

The proportion of National and One Nation respondents that put One Nation on the Right, in 1998, was also about a third. However, in 2001 the corresponding proportion was closer to a half, this more widespread view of the party being offset by a narrowing in support for the view of One Nation as a party of the Centre with twice as many Nationals and three times as many One Nation respondents seeing One Nation as a party of the Right in 2001, as opposed to a party of the Left. However, the proportions that thought One Nation was a party of the extreme Right remained relatively small. Whereas most respondents that considered One Nation a party of the Right placed it on the extreme Right, only a minority of National and One Nation respondents that saw it as a party of the Right considered it a party on the extreme Right.

It was the Democrats and the Greens that were most likely to think of One Nation not only as a party of the Right but also as a party of the extreme Right. In the 2001 survey, more than half the Democrats (54 per cent) and nearly two-thirds of the Greens (62 per cent) put One Nation on the Right — a substantial increase on the 1998 figures (Democrats, 42 per cent; Greens, 46 per cent). Moreover, most of those for whom it was a party of the Right put it on the extreme Right. A third of the Democrat respondents (32 per cent in 1998, 35 per cent in 2001) placed One Nation on the extreme Right, as did a third or more of the Greens (35 per cent in 1998, 45 per cent in 2001).

One Nation respondents were least inclined to see One Nation as a party occupying some sort of ideological extreme: in 1998, 14 per cent saw it occupying an extreme position (compared with the 32 per cent across the whole sample) and in 2001, 21 per cent did so (31 per cent across the whole sample). The reluctance of those who had voted for One Nation to place the party at one or other of the extremes is hardly surprising. Hanson appealed on behalf of 'ordinary Australians' against 'the fat cats, bureaucrats and do-gooders'. Her vision of the future was also an invocation of a past — of the days of Paul Hasluck (Liberal, quoted in relation to Aboriginal affairs) and Arthur Calwell (Labor, immigration) — but of a past that had long since been betrayed. In 1998, the respondents whose view of One Nation was closest to that of One Nation respondents themselves were the respondents that had voted National, only 20 per cent of whom saw One Nation as occupying an extreme position. This is perhaps unsurprising given that it was the National Party's electoral support that One Nation most threatened.³⁹ Supporters of the major parties, as well as those that had voted for the Democrats or the Greens, were up to twice as likely as the Nationals to think of One Nation as extreme.

By 2001, views about One Nation's extremism appear to have become more polarised. Labor respondents were slightly less inclined to see One Nation as a party of extremes with 33 per cent doing so compared to 38 per cent in 1998. Liberal respondents were also less inclined to do so, with 27 per cent, down from 32 per cent in 1998. Conversely, those who had voted for smaller parties, whether on the Left or on the Right, were more inclined to see in One Nation a party of extremes. Among those who had voted for One Nation, the proportion that placed the party at one or other extreme rose from 14 per cent to 21 per cent; among Nationals the proportion rose from 20 per cent to 32 per cent; among Democrats, from 37 per cent to 45 per cent; and among Greens, from 37 per cent to 54 per cent. While the figures for minor party respondents are less reliable, being based on much smaller numbers, they all diverge significantly from the responses of Liberal or Labor Party voters.

It is unclear why the view of One Nation held by minor-party-voting respondents might have shifted in this way. The Democrats focused their Senate campaign on the need to defeat One Nation and may have conveyed the impression that One Nation was the party least like it. Yet this does not explain in any obvious way why more of the Greens supporters, whose party did not campaign along these lines, also finished up thinking of One Nation as a party of the extreme. What is clear is that whether they had voted for parties generally regarded as on the Right (the Nationals and One Nation), in the Centre (the Democrats) or on the Left (the Greens), respondents that had voted for a minor party were more likely to think of One Nation as a party on the Right in 2001 than they had been in 1998.

One Nation by Ideological Self-Placement

If the ideological placement of One Nation was partly a function of the sort of party respondents themselves had voted for, was it also a function of where respondents placed themselves in left/right terms? As Table 4 shows, it was, although not in any very dramatic way and not necessarily in a way that adds anything to what might be explained by noting the party for which respondents cast their vote.

Table 4

Placement of One Nation on a left-right scale, by respondent's own placement on a Left-Right scale, Australian Election Study, 1998–2001 (percentages) †

One Nation 1998
Respondent	Left	Centre	Right	DK	n
Left Centre Right DK Total	16 (9) 22 (10) 26 (13) 9 (7) 21 (10)	10 18 14 6 14	56 (42) 38 (22) 44 (24) 8 (5) 36 (22)	18 22 16 77 29	(211) (988) (399) (299) (1897)
Sommers d	- 0.065*				(1279)

One Nation 2001
Left	Centre	Right	DK	n
14 (7) 24 (12) 26 (11) 17 (10) 22 (11)	7 21 14 5 15	68 (47) 34 (17) 44 (22) 12 (8) 36 (20)	11 22 15 66 28	(256) (936) (396) (422) (2010)
- 0.114*				(1229)

† Left = 0–3; Centre = 4–6; Right = 7–10.
Proportions placing One Nation on the extreme left (0) or extreme right (10) are noted in brackets.
* Significant at p = 0.05
Note: Some rows may not add to 100% due to rounding

Clearly, for most of those who placed themselves on the Left, One Nation was a party of the Right. For nearly half the Left (42 per cent in 1998, 47 per cent in 2001), One Nation was a party of the extreme Right. More generally, the Left saw One Nation as a party that belonged anywhere but in the Centre: those that declined to put One Nation on the Right were more likely to place it on the Left — as often as not, the extreme Left — than to place it in the Centre. Those on the Right were much less inclined to distance themselves from One Nation in this way. While not quite half (44 per cent) agreed that One Nation was a party of the Right, many more located it on the Right than thought of it as occupying any other position. Again, if One Nation was not a party of the Right it was a not a party that these respondents were prepared to put in the Centre. On the contrary, almost twice as many respondents on the Right put One Nation on the Left as put it in the Centre. Nor were those in the Centre inclined to identify with One Nation. Most saw it as a party of the Left or Right, with more seeing it as party of the Right (38 per cent in 1998, 34 per cent in 2001), even the extreme Right (22 per cent in 1998, 17 per cent in 2001), than as a party of the Left (22 per cent in 1998, 24 per cent in 2001) or the extreme Left (10 per cent in 1998, 12 per cent in 2001).

Overall, there was an inverse relationship between where respondents placed themselves ideologically and where they placed One Nation. This is consistent with the view that respondents were inclined to put some distance between One Nation and themselves. Nonetheless, the inverse correlation between self-placement and placement of One Nation was weak. That there was an inverse correlation at all was due to the distance from One Nation felt by those on the Left. As the smallest respondent group, however, those who placed themselves on the Left were not much of a counter-weight to those who placed themselves on the Right (about half as many again) or in the Centre (roughly four times as many as placed themselves on the Left).

Conclusion

Pauline Hanson's One Nation attracted enormous critical coverage. Those who ventured into print, outside the daily press, found more than a dozen ways to describe the party. Many used more than one label. The use of multiple labels reflected the ready availability of synonyms, the complexity of the phenomenon commentators were attempting to characterise, and confusion as to what it was they were trying to say.

One Nation was most frequently characterised as a party of the Right, the extreme Right or the populist Right. This pattern is not unique to Australia: an informal survey of the academic discussion of 'new extreme right' parties in Western democracies notes that the terms 'extreme right' and 'populism' are now 'pre-eminent'.⁴⁰ However, what these labels signified was not always clear. Nor were the different labels necessarily distinct. Norberto Bobbio may insist that those who use word like 'left' and 'right' manage to 'understand each other perfectly',⁴¹ but the evidence here is far from overwhelming. Nonetheless, those who described the party as part of the 'extreme right' or 'far right' — or those who saw it as a party of the 'right' or 'rightwing' — generally stressed One Nation's views about Aborigines and immigrants. Those who saw the party as part of the 'populist right' accorded a prominent place to the party's concerns about jobs.

In her maiden speech and in her speech to launch her party, Hanson attacked the alleged special treatment of Aborigines, the practice of bringing in migrants who would not assimilate and the divisiveness engendered by multiculturalism — positions associated most strongly in recent Australian history with the Right. However in her speech to launch One Nation's first federal election campaign, Hanson's emphasis switched to the need for jobs and the need to build local industries, issues more commonly associated with the Left. Just when this shift occurred — indeed, whether there was a shift rather an aberration — is not clear; to clarify the matter would require a more systematic analysis of Hanson's speeches.⁴² Nor is it known whether any such shift registered in the electorate at large. But that it did register seems unlikely; certainly there is not much evidence that those who followed Hanson closely registered it.

My analysis of Hanson's speeches suggests that the most common ways of specifying One Nation's status as a party of the Right are either too narrow or too broad. While the emphasis on issues of race and ethnicity in Hanson's speeches of 1996 and 1997 might be taken to validate the idea of One Nation as a party of the 'extreme right', the strong emphasis she placed in her 1998 speech on the need to generate jobs points to the limitations of this label. But the emphasis in her federal election speech on the loss of jobs — not the privatisation of state-owned businesses, like Qantas, the reduction in government services, like rail, or the elimination of private sector services, like banks — also points to the inadequacy of a label like 'populist right', with its allusion to a range of economic issues much broader than those on which Hanson was focusing.

That writers steered clear of describing One Nation as a party of the Left should come as no surprise; apart from the fact that many were themselves on the Left, broadly speaking, and had an interest in distancing themselves, the combination of race and nationalism has a long, emblematic, history on the Right. Nonetheless, it was not long ago that a wariness of non-Anglo migrants, and not just those who did not 'assimilate', a commitment to 'equality' for Aborigines rather than 'privilege', and a defence of high tariffs in the name of Australian jobs, represented the bedrock values if not of those well to the Left, then at least of the ALP. The corollary should be equally clear: any postmodernist reading of Hanson destabilising historically given notions of Left (equality) and Right (inequality), or of her representing some transcendence of the two, is difficult to sustain.

What most of the commentary missed — ironically, in the case of those who labelled her a 'populist' — was precisely her populism: Hanson as the voice of 'the people' who will not 'just lie down' before the all-powerful 'politically correct' and 'see their country disappear before their eyes'.⁴³ True, this element is less evident in her speech to the Parliament in 1996 or at the election launch in 1998 than in her speech to the party in 1997, but without acknowledging the force of this sort of rhetoric — a force that is not reducible to views about Aborigines, immigration or economic insecurity — it is impossible to fully comprehend the basis of her electoral support.⁴⁴

Respondents in national surveys did not see One Nation as a party of the Right; rather they saw it more than any other party as a party of extreme Right. If this is hardly surprising, what explains it? Part of the answer may lie with the parties respondents supported. Those who voted for the Democrats and Greens were more likely to see One Nation as a party of the extreme Right than were those who voted Labor or Liberal; One Nation voters were the least likely to see the party in this light. (For reasons that are not clear, the differences were more marked in 2001 than in 1998). Respondents who placed themselves on the Left were much more likely than those who placed themselves in the Centre or on the Right to categorise One Nation as a party of the extreme Right. Nevertheless, while there is an inverse relationship between where respondents placed the parties and where they placed themselves, the relationship is weak. In short, the placement of One Nation on the extreme Right is not just, or even largely, a matter of political distancing.

What is it about the party that might explain its placement? The correlation between where respondents see themselves in terms of Left and Right and where they stood on issues associated with One Nation provides one clue.⁴⁵ In 1996 or 1998 (depending on when the questions were asked) the AES data show a relatively strong relationship⁴⁶ between where respondents placed themselves on the Left-Right scale and their views about whether governments were doing too much for Aborigines, whether land rights had gone too far, and whether it was important that Australian Aborigines be recognised, whether it was important for migrants to be like other Australians, and whether asylum seekers should be turned back. There was also a relatively strong relationship with opposition to a republic (One Nation members were over-represented among those working for the No campaign)⁴⁷ and support for 'the war on terrorism' (not something strongly supported by Hanson). Importantly, there was a much weaker relationship, or no relationship at all, between positions on the left/right scale and views about the number of migrants coming to Australia or whether they were taking Australian jobs, views about whether imports should be limited, or views about whether Australia should build stronger trading links with Asia. On this evidence, One Nation's place as a party of the extreme Right is likely to reflect Hanson's position on Aboriginal 'privilege', her views about the treatment of migrants, including the policy of multiculturalism, but not her views on migrants taking Australian jobs or the perils of international trade.

Respondents also saw One Nation, more than any other party, as a party of the extreme Left. It could be that respondents who considered One Nation 'extreme', but who were not used to thinking in terms of Left and Right, assigned the party to one or other extreme more or less at random. Certainly One Nation was regarded as more extreme than any other party, but this hardly explains why respondents were twice as likely to put One Nation on the extreme Right than to put it on the extreme Left. Another possibility is that it was seen as a party of the extreme Left by those who associated it with particular views on migrant numbers, tariff barriers and the importance of public ownership — views once closely associated with Labor. While this explanation has some appeal, it leaves unexplained the place of the Greens, seen by many more respondents as a party of the Left but not by more respondents as a party of the extreme Left. A last possibility is that things that some respondents identified as characteristic of the extreme Left, were seen by others as part and parcel of the extreme Right. The literature produced by elements of the Left, on the one side, and by the League of Rights or by Hanson, on the other, shows that on issues like foreign investment or the 'treason' of Australian politicians, parts of the Left and parts of the Right have a good deal in common.⁴⁸ Those respondents who placed One Nation on the extreme Right and those who placed it on the extreme Left may have been closer in the views of the party than their apparently contradictory characterisations suggest.

Endnotes

^* Thanks are due to Kylie Brass and Megan Blaxland for research assistance, and to the journal's anonymous referees and Cas Mudde for comments on an earlier draft. An Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP0211164 supported the research and the writing.

^1. For a good short history of the Party to 1999, see I. Ward, M. Leach and G. Stokes, 'Introduction: The Rise and Fall of One Nation', in M. Leach, G. Stokes and I. Ward (eds), The Rise and Fall of One Nation, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1998, ch. 1. See also S. Balson, Inside One Nation, Interactive Presentations, np, 2000.

^2. This emphasis on 'race' is consistent with the usage in R.W. Connell and F. Gould, The Politics of the Extreme Right: Warringah 1966, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1967, though in the mid-sixties the focus of the extreme Right's concern, as Connell and Gould emphasise, was on the international situation. The significance of Warringah's political history to the birth of One Nation is noted in D. Veitch, Hansonism: Trick or Treat, David Syme College of National Economics, Public Administration and Business, Flemington, Vic, 1997, ch. 9.

^3. The speech has been reprinted in: H. Dodd, Pauline: The Hanson Phenomenon, Boolarong Press, Brisbane, [1997], Appendix 1; G.J. Merritt, Pauline Hanson: The Truth, St George Publications, Parkholme, SA, 1997, ch. 1; D. Horne, Looking For Leadership: Australia in the Howard Years, Viking, Ringwood, 2001, Exhibit B; S. Warhaft (ed.), Well May We Say ... The Speeches That Made Australia, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2004, pp. 291–97; M. Cathcart and K. Darian-Smith (eds), Stirring Australian Speeches, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2004; and R. Kemp and M. Stanton (eds), Speaking for Australia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2004, pp. 268–71, slightly but inexcusably abridged. The initial reception and impact of the speech are noted in M. Goot, 'The Perils of Polling and the Popularity of Pauline', Current Affairs Bulletin, vol. 73, no. 4, December 1996/January 1997, pp. 8–9. See also S. Scalmer, 'The Production of a Founding Event: The Case of Pauline Hanson's Maiden Parliamentary Speech', Theory and Event, vol. 3, no. 2, 1999 <http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/index.html>

^4. See, M. Goot, 'Pauline Hanson and the Power of the Media', in Leach et al. (eds), The Rise and Fall of One Nation, p. 122.

^5. However, an argument for its utility is developed in M. Goot and I.Watson, 'Support for Immigration, Multiculturalism, and Australian Identity', in S. Wilson et al. (eds), Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2005, pp. 182–203.

^6. For example, 'Far Right Violence is no Titillating Romp', Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 1992; reprinted in A. Henderson (ed.), Gerard Henderson Scribbles On ... , Wilkinson Books, Melbourne, 1993, p. 256, in relation to the League of Rights. For a discussion of the League as well as the Citizens Electoral Councils in the context of Hanson, see R. Wear, 'One Nation and the Queensland Right', in Leach et al. (eds), The Rise and Fall of One Nation, ch. 3.

^7. Q. Beresford, Governments, Markets and Globalisation, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 2000, pp. 108–9.

^8. I. McAllister and J. Wanna, 'Citizens' Expectations and Perceptions of Governance', in G. Davis and P. Weller (eds), Are You Being Served? States, Citizens and Governance, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 2001, p. 11.

^9. J. Frow, 'Cultural Studies and the Neoliberal Imagination', Yale Journal of Criticism, vol. 12, no. 2, Pp. 424; see also S. Lockie and L. Bourke, 'Rural Australia: An Introduction', in S. Lockie and L. Bourke (eds), Rurality Bites: The Social and Environmental Transformation of Rural Australia, Pluto Press, Annandale, NSW, 2001, p. 2.

^10. S. Magarey and S. Sheridan, 'Local, Global, Regional: Women's Studies in Australia', Feminist Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, 2002, p. 29; J. Wiseman, Global Nation? Australia and the Politics of Globalisation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 113; B. Frankel, When the Boat Comes In: Transforming Australia in the Age of Globalisation, Pluto Press, Annandale, NSW, 2001, p. 115. See also D. McDougall, 'Australia and Asia-Pacific Security Regionalism: From Hawke and Keating to Howard', Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International & Strategic Affairs, vol. 23, no. 1, 2001, p. 27; and R. de Angelis, 'A Rising Tide for Jean-Marie, Jorg and Pauline? Xenophobic Populism in Comparative Perspective', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 49, no. 1, 2003, pp. 75–93.

^11. J. Stratton, 'Not Just Another Multicultural Story: The English, From "Fitting In" to Self-Ethnicisation', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 66, 2000, p. 24; see also R. Gibson, I. McAllister and T. Swenson, 'The Politics of Race and Immigration in Australia: One Nation Voting in the 1998 Election', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 25, no. 5, 2002, pp. 823–44, where the 'radical populist right' is equated with being anti-immigrant.

^12. J.H. Mittleman, 'Globalisation: Captor and Captive', Third World Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 6, 2000, p. 920. See also A. Norton, 'Towards a New Australian Settlement? The Progress of Australian Liberalism', in J.R. Nethercote (ed.), Liberalism and the Australian Federation, Federation Press, Sydney, 2001, p. 241; I. Gray and G. Lawrence, A Future for Regional Australia: Escaping Global Misfortune, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2001, p. 2; and E. Vasta, 'Preface', in E. Vasta (ed.), Citizenship, Community and Democracy, New York, St Martin's Press, 2000, p. vii.

^13. Frankel, When the Boats Come In, p. 4; see also A. Mughan, C. Bean and I. McAllister, 'Economic Globalization, Job Insecurity, and the Populist Reaction', Electoral Studies, vol. 22, no. 4, 2003, pp. 617–34.

^14. P. Putnis, 'Popular Discourses and Images of Poverty and Welfare in the News Media', in R. Finch and P. Saunders (eds), Creating Unequal Futures? Rethinking Poverty, Inequality and Disadvantage, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2001, pp. 84–5.

^15. M. Wark, Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace: The Light on the Hill in a Postmodern World, Pluto Press, Annandale, 1999, p. 30.

^16. M. Latham, 'The Moral Foundations of Government', in P. Botsman and M. Latham (eds), The Enabling State: People Before Democracy, Pluto Press, Annandale, 2001, p. 238.

^17. J.S. Dryzek, 'Including Australia: A Democratic History', in G. Brennan and F.G. Castles (eds), Australia Reshaped: 200 Years of Institutional Transformation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 136–7.

^18. J. Rutherford, The Gauche Intruder: Freud, Lacan and the White Australian Fantasy, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2000, p. 27.

^19. N. Morris, 'Last Post for the Gold Coast: Heart of a Nation and the Japanese "Colonisation" of Queensland', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 81, 2004, p. 130.

^20. A. Wimmer, 'The Dramaturgy of the Political Right: Austria's Jorge Haider in Comparison with Pauline Hanson', Overland, no. 160, 2000, pp. 31–5.

^21. See, for example, P. Andren, The Andren Report: An Independent Way in Australian Politics, Scribe, Melbourne, 2003, p. 115, on his 'extremely right wing' colleagues on the cross benches; Robert Hughes on 'the red-headed poster girl of the far right', cited by A. Riemer, Hughes, Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 2001, pp. 159–60; C. Johnson, 'Pauline Hanson and One Nation', in H. Betz and S. Immerfall (eds), The New Politics of the Right, St Martin's Press, New York, 1998; M. Wesley, 'Setting and Securing Australia's National Interests: The National Interest as Values', in I. Marsh (ed.), Australia's Choices: Options for a Prosperous and Fair Society, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2003, p. 201; D. Cahill, 'The Australian Right's New Class Discourse and the Construction of the Political Community', in R. Hood and R. Markey (eds), Labour and Community: Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, 1999, pp. 53–4.

^22. D. Hollinsworth, 'The Work of Anti-Racism', in G. Gray and C. Winter (eds), The Resurgence of Racism: Howard, Hanson and the Race Debate, Monash Publications in History, Monash University, Clayton, Vic., 1997, p. 132.

^23. P. Cleary, Cleary Independent, HarperCollins, Sydney, 1998, p. 30. See also, J.M. Duck, R. Lalonde, D. Weiss, 'International Images and Mass Media: The Effects of Media Coverage on Canadians' Perceptions of Ethnic and Race Relations in Australia', Australian Journal of Psychology, vol. 55, no. 1, 2003, pp. 15–24 , on 'right-wing political independents' and their 'emotive criticisms of Aborigines and Asians'; and P. Kelly, 'Between Culture and Equality', in P. Kelly (ed.), Multiculturalism Reconsidered, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2002, p. 3, on Hanson and 'movements of the right, deploying versions of an argument from culture to defend "white" nations against the decadence of coloured immigration'.

^24. C. Lumby, Gotcha: Life in a Tabloid World, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1999, p. xviii. See also, D. Pulford, 'Two Plays, One Nation', Meanjin, vol. 61, no. 3, 2002, pp. 121–9 on 'the 'racist right'.

^25. For example, I. Ward, 'Commonwealth of Australia: January to June 1998', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 44, no. 4, 1998, pp. 567–76.

^26. M. Maddox, 'Whatever Happened to Equality?' Social Alternatives, vol. 20, no.3, 2001, pp. 14–18; and E. Mackey, 'Constructing an Endangered Nation: Risk, Race and Rationality in Australia's Native Title Debate', in D. Lupton (ed.) Risk and Sociological Theory: New Directions and Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, p. 110.

^27. P. Weller and L. Young, 'Political Parties and the Party System', in M. Keating, J. Wanna and P. Weller (eds), Institutions on the Edge? Capacity for Governance, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards. 2000, p. 172; and Fischer cited in P. Rees, The Boy from Boree Creek: The Tim Fischer Story, Allen & Unwin, Crow's Nest, 2001, p. 266.

^28. Henderson's views on the 'lunar Right' in relation to Hanson and concerns expressed by the Australia-Israel Review about Hanson's links with 'neo-Nazis' are attacked by someone sympathetic to Hanson in Veitch, Hansonism, ch. 10ff.

^29. A. Moore, The Right Road? A History of Right-wing Politics in Australia, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1995, p. 110.

^30. B. Bainbridge, 'Improving the Spin While Losing the Plot', Arena Magazine, no. 38, August-September 1998, pp. 47–8 ; M. Latham, Civilising Global Capital: New Thinking for Australian Labor, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1998, p. 366, n. 5; Lumby, Gotcha, p. xviii. See also B. Cope and M. Kalantzis, A Place in the Sun: Re-creating the Australian Way of Life, HarperCollins, Pymble, 2000, p. 252.

^31. C. Kelen, 'Everyone's Pants Down: What Pauline Teaches Me', Meanjin, vol. 60, no. 3, 2001, pp. 197–211.

^32. For example, Cope and Kalantzis, A Place in the Sun, p. 252.

^33. S.M. Lipset, Political Man, Heinemann, London, 1959, ch. 5.

^34. Manne, who thought it 'unlikely that Hanson would be able to create 'a new party of the populist right', had already bestowed the label 'anti-political politician' on John Hewson in 1993. For Hanson, see 'Our First Anti-Politician', 1996, reprinted in The Way We Live Now: The Controversies of the Nineties, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 48, 88–89; for Hewson, see 'The Aborted Revolution', 1993, reprinted p. 48.

^35. See I. Budge, D. Robertson and D. Hearl (eds), Ideology, Strategy and Party Change: Spatial Analyses of Post-War Election Programmes in 19 Democracies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, Appendix B.

^36. For One Nation's dependence on men, see M. Goot, 'Hanson's Heartland: Who's for One Nation and Why', in N. Davidoff (ed.), Two Nations: The Causes and Effects of the Rise of the One Nation Party in Australia, Bookman, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 59–60 and M. Goot and I. Watson, 'One Nation's Electoral Support: Where Does it Come From, What Makes it Different, and How Does it Fit?' Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 47 no. 2, 2001, pp. 175–76; on 'angry white men', see M. Sawer, 'Women: Gender Wars in the Nineties', in M. Simms and J. Warhurst (eds), Howard's Agenda: The 1998 Australian Election, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2000, p. 151.

^37. M. Kingston, Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1999, p. 198.

^38. The spread of views, or standard deviation around the mean, was greater for One Nation in the 1998 and 2001 surveys than for any of the other parties; M. Goot, 'Party Convergence Reconsidered', Australian Journal of Political Science, vol. 39, no. 1, 2004, p. 63.

^39. P. L. Reynolds 'One Nation's Electoral Support in Queensland: The 1998 State and Federal Elections Compared', in Leach, et al. (eds), The Rise and Fall of One Nation, pp. 155–6. See also Goot and Watson, 'One Nation's Electoral Support', pp. 123–3.

^40. R. Eatwell, 'Introduction: The New Extreme Right Challenge', in R. Eatwell and C. Mudde (eds), Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge, Routledge, London, 2004, p. 5. However, I should reiterate that 'right' or some variant of it was used in less than half of our items.

^41. N. Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction, trans. Allan Cameron, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995/1996, p. 29.

^42. Merritt, Pauline Hanson, Part 1, reprints four speeches and one media release. These seem broadly consistent with the thrust of the 1996 and 1997 speeches examined here.

^43. There are similarities but also differences between populist rhetoric of this kind and that discussed in P. Love, Labour and the Money Power: Australian Labour Populism 1890–1950, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1984. For a stress on the similarities, see P. Love 'Hanson's Unlikely Heroes', AQ: A Journal of Contemporary Analysis, vol. 69, no. 3, 1997, pp. 25–8. For an account with an eye for the differences, see G. Stokes, 'One Nation and Australian Populism', in Leach et al. (eds), The Rise and Fall of One Nation, ch.1.

^44. Goot and Watson, 'One Nation's Electoral Support', p. 179. For evidence that a populist discourse in the Australian press expanded as electoral support for One Nation increased, see S. Scalmer and M. Goot, 'Elites Constructing Elites: News' Limited's Newspapers, 1996–2002', in M. Sawer and B. Hindess (eds), Us and Them: Anti-Elitism in Australia, API Network, Perth, 2004, p. 141.

^45. The most sophisticated analysis of the left/right scale in the Australian Electoral Study (AES) is in S. Jackman, 'Pauline Hanson, the Mainstream, and Political Elites: The Place of Race in Australian Political Ideology', Australian Journal of Political Science vol. 33, no. 2, 1999, pp. 178. However, it is based on the 1996 AES and focuses on views of the candidates rather than views of respondents drawn from the electorate. See also J.A. Laponce, Left and Right: The Topography of Political Perceptions, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1981, pp. 195–201, 261 n.14.

^46. Defined here as a correlation co-efficient (Somers' d) equal to or greater than ±0.200. significant at the 0.000 level. A coefficient of this size proved relatively strong: none of the coefficients I uncovered was greater than 0.300, and 85 per cent (2001) or 95 per cent (1998) were less than ±0.200.

^47. David Elliott, campaign director for the Vote No campaign, personal communication.

^48. Compare A. David and T. Wheelwright, The Third Wave: Australia and Asian Capitalism, Left Book Club Co-Operative, Sutherland, NSW, 1989, with some of the League of Rights literature; or L. Weiss, E. Thurbon and J. Mathews, How to Kill A Country: Australia's Devastating Trade Deal with the United States, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 2004, with Hanson's speeches. Commonality presupposes the existence of a two-dimensional policy space; see, in a different context, R.V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, Appendix III.

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