On Pauline Hanson the aussie bigot...

I cringe every time I see Pauline Hanson's name in the news, and there is no shortage of it. From her burst onto the aussie political scene with the One Nation Party using the small town of Ipswich in Queensland, to her speech blatantly full of bigotry and racism, to her fall from grace (as if she ever was) with convicted fraud charges, to the dismantle of One Nation, to her abandoning of Australia moving to Britain, to her return to Australia after discovering the supposedly greener pasture in Britain is no better than that in Australia, to her attempt to reinvent herself for a comeback to politics in Sydney this time.

To a very small extent, I feel sorry for this woman who has exhibited nothing but ignorance. This small-town fish-and-chip shop owner rode the wave of voter nervousness and xenophobia towards each succession of migration population. Never once did she pause to ponder her own status in Australia as a migrant herself. Afterall, the aborigines are the true indigenous Australians; everybody else (the Brits, the whites, the Chinese, the Indians, and now those from the middle eastern descent) is just another migrant to this blessed land we called home. I'm sure Hanson would argue that she is not a first-generation migrant, so she can be regarded as an Australian. We could argue too, that the same can be said of a large majority of the aussie populace that falls in this category. The fact that she is white and her forefathers who once came from Britain does not entitle her any more an Australian than anybody else who has pledged allegiance to the country. If anything could be said of her forefathers, one could argue that they were most likely once convicts and criminals. Chinese, who are quick to disparage her too, would easily dismiss her as her "thief" look; but I'm not going to go there.

So, what do I make of her latest comeback attempt? I can only think of the word pathetic. After her attempt to ditch Australia to move to Britain, thinking that Britain should be more "pure" than the multi-cultural Australia, she must have thought that she would find more familiar grounds and cohorts there. Afterall, they still have the royals! I'm sure she has conveniently failed to acknowledge the fact that the class system (or at least the concept of it) of the Brits is still quite alive and well. It's not surprising that the Brits did not embrace her and her radical racial views. She would, in fact, find more brown faces (eg. those from India) in UK than in Australia. And, the Britis don't have that good a medicare system as Australia.

I can only hope that the Australian voters in NSW see through the fraud in this Hanson character, and vote with their feet. To allow her back in the Senate is only going to give her a legitimate platform to vent and rant, which can never be good for Australia as a whole. I, for one, am going to vote against this woman, when the time comes.