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Journalist David Marr says he likes Pauline Hanson's voice; he likes it in the way he liked Julia Gillard's voice. It cuts through, it is distinctive.
At its best it has that rare political quality: authenticity. Marr says he likes the Hanson voice because it has never changed.
Make no mistake: Marr is no fan of Hanson.
One of Australia's most prolific, flamboyant, and acute political observers, Marr zeroes in on Hanson in the latest edition of the Quarterly Essay: The White Queen — One Nation and the Politics of Race.
I had the opportunity to interview Marr — twice in fact — for a book event and on this week's episode of The Link.
I asked Marr if he found himself even grudgingly admiring the woman who is now so familiar to us we simply refer to her as Pauline.
He acknowledges her resilience, after two decades on the Australian political scene in and out of office — even for a while in jail — she is still around; still a force.
Stealing a line from the song Don't Cry For Me Argentina — about another political heroine, former Argentinian first lady Eva Peron — Marr says: the truth is she never left us.
One Nation, he says, was only ever about her. As he says: "Without her, One Nation would not last a week."
And Marr likes that unmistakable voice. He hits on something fundamental here. Hanson's resurgence is linked to a wave of populism disrupting global politics: Trump, Brexit, France's Le Pen.
Philosopher Timothy Garton Ash says in an essay in the recent New York Review of Books: "Populists speak in the name of the people. It certainly helps if you sound like the people."
Ash says populists crucially identify as "the people", but he quickly adds "only some of the people".
So it is with Pauline.
Marr says at its core, One Nation is about race. Hanson came to prominence attacking what she saw as an Aboriginal rights industry and warning we were being "swamped by Asians".
Two decades later her focus is more broadly against immigration, specifically Muslim immigration.
As Marr says, Hanson doesn't want to make Australia great again, she wants to make Australia white again.
But is that who we are? The short answer: No.
Australia an 'optimistic and tolerant society', Marr says
Marr cites the latest research from the Scanlon Foundation which tracks on Australians' attitudes to immigration.
It shows overwhelmingly as a nation we don't share Hanson's fears.
According to the 2016 survey, 70 per cent of us are happy with migrant numbers or want them increased.
We are not a nation riven with division. The survey reveals that 90 per cent of us feel we belong in this place.
Marr says a snapshot of this nation shows we "live in an open, orderly, optimistic and tolerant society".
Compared to Trump's America or Brexit era Great Britain or the political extremes and arch-nationalism of Europe, Marr says definitively: "this is a better country".
So, what's with Hanson? Why does she get so much attention?
Marr blames it on a failure of politics. Our political leaders don't take her on. Rather than apply scrutiny, there is a rush to appease.
As he writes: "The decent Australia revealed in poll after poll seems not to be the country our politicians are representing."
I'd suggest this is not just a failure of politics, but the media.
I have spent half of a 30-year career outside of Australia, and when I returned home I was dismayed at the obsession with politicians.
Endless hours of air time are given over to politicians; they write op-ed columns, they host their own TV programs, they even get to cook on air.
I share the fascination with politics, but I don't think we talk enough to people and how politics directly affects them.
Certainly we don't hear enough from the 70 or 80 per cent Marr identifies in his essay.
We miss something here. We risk seeing division where there is in fact harmony. We are not a nation afraid. We are not facing waves of immigrants from war-torn countries. Unlike Europe we don't share land borders and we control our coastline.
We are not wracked by the same economic anxiety of much of the rest of the world. As Marr points out: "no swathe of Australia was destroyed by the global financial crisis".
Would we know this from our news headlines? Is this the story we get from our politicians?
Liberal left also contributing to populist backlash
Marr writes: "A strange gap has opened between the mood of this country and the temper of its politics."
Marr says the two-party system is fraying and trust in politicians — historically high in Australia — is plummeting. The battle has moved to the fringes and there is a "brawl for votes out on the right".
This is Hanson's territory. She is a charismatic politician, with a voice of "authenticity", feeding on a disenchantment with politics, a hankering for nostalgia — things were better in the good-old-days — and a hostility to immigration, especially Muslims.
But remember this is a minority — yes, a significant one — but it is not who most of us are.
There are some shortcomings in Marr's essay. Yes, Australia may not reflect the deeper groundswell of revolt that fuels the populism of the northern hemisphere, but we are not un-touched by it.
Marr doesn't really explore the role of the liberal-left in contributing to the populist backlash.
Political scientist Mark Lilla penned an essay — the most read opinion piece in the New York Times of 2016 — where he argued for the end of identity liberalism.
Lilla wrote: "American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender, and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism's message…"
He said Hillary Clinton, campaigning for President, "slipped too easily into the rhetoric of diversity".
She called out to African-American, Latino, or LGBTI and women voters, but where did this leave those excluded: the white working class with strong religious convictions?
As Lilla pointed out, two-thirds of white voters without university degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did white evangelicals.
Politicians spending too much time harvesting far-right votes
Philosopher John Gray explored similar themes in his essay in the New Statesman magazine last year, The Closing of the Liberal Mind.
Surveying the global political landscape Gray wrote: "All that seemed solid in Liberalism is melting into air".
As an entire generation finds its "view of the world melting away", Gray identifies a narcissism among the proponents of liberalism — whether of the right or the left — rather than look to their own failings "rail against the voters who reject their enlightened leadership".
People are concerned about the pace of globalisation; they are seeking refuge in anti-liberal populists.
Gray talks of the emergence of a "post-liberal" world fuelled not by a "revolt of the ignorant masses" but "the follies of liberals themselves".
But Gray does believe Liberalism is worth fighting for.
Garton Ash is less harsh on his assessment of the failure of liberals, but he too believes liberalism — the values of freedom and toleration — is under siege.
Concluding his New York Review of Books essay, Garton Ash writes: "The liberal left and the liberal right need to come up with policies, and accessible, emotionally appealing language around those policies, to win those disaffected voters back."
Marr does not cover the same terrain — it is a pity, the liberal elite deserves scrutiny here too — but he does reach a similar conclusion: we need a political message that speaks to the best of our country and doesn't cower at the potential loss of votes to Hanson.
In short, he says, they need to take her on.
We have an advantage. As his essay points out, we don't share the crisis gripping other parts of the world: we are a better country.
Marr writes: "… the far right where politicians are spending so much energy harvesting votes these days is not Australia."
The great mass of Australia — right there in the centre — is waiting.
David Marr loves Pauline Hanson's voice. But where is that new voice with something better to say?
Topics: pauline-hanson, one-nation, australia
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