By Norm Dixon
Pauline Hanson and her minders have toured Queensland to secure the support of the state's most rabid far-right and racist groups in preparation for the state election. One Nation has announced that it will stand candidates in every seat in next year's state election.
One Nation's national director, David Ettridge, said on October 29 that the party's result in the Queensland election would be a "litmus test" for the next federal election.
In August and September, Ettridge and Hanson's senior adviser, David Oldfield, met with leaders of the extreme right in Queensland to win their support for Hanson's campaign.
According to a report in the virulently racist and anti-Semitic Lock, Stock and Barrel, Ettridge and Oldfield met with the news-sheet's publisher, Ron Owen, the vice-president of the Australian Firearms Owners' Association, Ian McNiven, and Tony Pitt, a former leader of the far-right Confederate Action Party and publisher of a string of extreme right, racist journals.
The Lock, Stock and Barrel article quotes Ettridge as telling the assembled rightists, "If I'm going to fight anyone it's not going to be over keeping guns, it's going to be the bloody Indonesians". The article said that the meeting discussed strategy and policies.
Pitt is secretary of the Hervey Bay branch of One Nation, and his wife is secretary of the Maryborough branch. The willingness of One Nation's leaders to allow someone like Pitt and his followers to hold such influential positions exposes the falsity of Hanson's claims that One Nation is not racist and is for "equality".
In Wake Up Australia, one of his stable of gutter sheets, Pitt writes: "Nobody in their right mind would sit down and conciliate with a bunch of Maoris, Afghans, Indians, Malays and seven eighths whites, who pretend to Aborigines, over what happened well over two hundred years ago, unless there was something in it for them, and there is, BIG MONEY.
"Two thirds of Australia is claimed by militant Aborigines backed, trained and funded by Black Muslims, Gaddaffi, Indonesia and others who covet our minerals, oil, land and fishing. Black youths force whites off the footpath, steal at will, and get away with it. Whites live behind bars with dogs and are still not safe."
The article is accompanied by a racist cartoon depicting Asians carving up Australia. The paper carries a mock advertisement for Indonesian interpreters "so Muslim invaders can communicate with Australian slaves".
Interviewed by Greg Roberts in the September 12 Sydney Morning Herald, Pitt claimed that Asians "played dirty" and only understood "naked force". Australia could contain them only by possessing nuclear and biological weapons. He said that Indonesia was planning to invade Australia.
Pitt told Roberts that Aboriginal leaders opposed to the Howard government's Wik legislation were "mixed breed white, yellow and brown troublemakers" and that the stolen generation's parents were "primitives" whose children had to be taken away because they were in "moral and physical danger". "We saved the Aborigines from themselves", he declared.
Pitt's earlier political vehicle, the Confederate Action Party, included among its policies: "Cancel the refugee program and in future draw immigrants from traditional and Christian countries ... Eliminate government benefits from non-Australians ... Cancel foreign aid until our national debt is eliminated."
Pitt remains leader of a far-right group called the Australians and in this capacity is a regular contributor to Lock, Stock and Barrel. The Australians are obsessed by the belief that Australia is going to be invaded by Indonesians.
An advertisement for the Australians in Lock, Stock and Barrel #26 lists the group's interstate contacts. Both the South Australian and Western Australian leaders are now active in One Nation and, according to its WA representative, the Australians' members have all joined One Nation.
David Ettridge is unperturbed by Pitt's views, which are "a bit extreme", he admitted to the Sydney Morning Herald. "We respect his right to have his views. We know he is controversial because he stirs the pot but as far as we are concerned we have no problem with him."
The others at the meeting are also notorious on the far-right fringe. Owen's Lock, Stock and Barrel is renowned for its promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and advocating the formation of right-wing "guerilla" groups.
At least two issues of the paper have been banned by the Queensland censorship board. One issue explained how to convert a rifle into a machine-gun, and another how to make "two-part" explosives — explosives designed to kill and maim their victims, then explode a second time to kill emergency workers who come to their aid.
Owen is a Gympie gun-shop owner and federal president of the Firearms Owners' Association. He also leads an outfit called the Home Security Association. It was Owen who claimed that anti-gun sentiment following the Port Arthur massacre was so strong because there are "too many homosexuals in the media, and homosexuals don't like guns".
Lock, Stock and Barrel sells car stickers that proclaim "Gay rights — the only rights gays have is the right to die".
Lock, Stock and Barrel, in its May-June 1995 issue, described the white race as "superior by far" and claimed that 90% of blacks are "retarded to border-line retarded". Whites should "have stacks of kids and then some more" and make sure their marriages succeed because "sons growing up with their mothers are four times as likely to turn into raging poofters".
The Sydney Morning Herald on September 5 reported that Owen claimed a majority of the Firearms Owners' Association had joined One Nation and would campaign "vigorously" for Hanson candidates. "If you think of One Nation as a being, David Oldfield is the head and we are the body", Owen said.
Ian McNiven is best remembered for his July 4, 1996, appearance at a pro-gun rally in Gympie, dressed like Adolf Hitler and introduced as "Jackboot Johnnie".
In May that year, McNiven called for the spilling of blood to stop the federal government's gun control laws. In 1995, McNiven said that he was "comfortable with a lot of the AUSI Freedom Scouts ideology". The Australian United for Survival and Individual Freedom Scouts is a right-wing militia that claims 3000 members and, according to its leader, Ross Provis, has "heavy and light machine-guns, mortars and artillery pieces" hidden throughout NSW.
Meanwhile, the Queensland Nationals intend to direct preferences to One Nation candidates in the state election, as well as in the next federal election. The Liberals continue to refuse to commit themselves to placing Hanson last on their how-to-votes.
The degree to which 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the Coalition feel an affinity to Hanson and her far-right cohorts was starkly illustrated on October 29, when three National Party MHRs — De Anne Kelly, Bob Katter and Paul Marek — joined with Hanson and Graeme Campbell to vote for amendments to make Howard's racist Wik legislation even more discriminatory.