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Since
October 1995
One Nation support explodes in Queensland
Newspoll came up with some Queensland specific results (see national below) on the state of the political parties that confirm the exploding support base behind One Nation:
| Party | May 29-31 | Apr-May | Jan-Mar | 1995 Election |
| ALP | 44 | 41 | 41 | 42.9 |
| Coalition | 34 | 39 | 39 | 49.0 |
| One Nation | 15 | 10 | 5 | n/a |
| Others | 4 | 6 | 10 | 4 |
| Greens | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2.9 |
| Democrats | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1.2 |
Yesterday the Coalition launched their official campaign with Premier Rob Borbidge starting to sound more and more like a Johnny-come-lately One Nation. Why he doesn't just become a member I do not know.
He mimicked One Nation Law and Order policy with truth in sentencing... apologising to the Queensland community for being so slack in the way in which he has handled the manner in which sentences are served.
"I am sorry," Borbidge said, "because it is clear we were not tough enough. In our next term of government we will legislate to ensure that serious violent offenders serve 100% of their sentences."
In his speech he said, "To Queensland voters I just say this of billion dollar Beattie's sales pitch: 'Buyer beware'."
Pauline Hanson's One Nation was not referred to once in his speech but her impact was always in the background with the announcements being made. These included:
Law: Serious violent offenders to serve their full sentence.
Business: Shield Queensland business from foreign owned businesses (shades of MAI).
Environment: Au$200 million over the next five years.
Jobs: Payroll tax to be withheld for a twelve month period where an unemployed person is hired.
Hanson's involvement in Parliamentary debate beat-up again and again and again and again....
It is a fascinating fact about an unethical media group like News Limited that when an issue is raised that they don't want to cover (like the Shreddergate issue many months ago) they say "that's old news".
Of course this only applies when it suits them.
The stuck record has come out again with the front page revelation (again) that Pauline Hanson only voted on 48 out of 148 legislative votes. Those she failed to vote on included native title, the Australian flag and gun control.
Pauline has made it very clear to those who will listen (and don't put News Limited in there because they won't) that she has just one vote and where she does not agree with the outcome or the issue being discussed she does not vote.
Take native title for example. Pauline Hanson has said time and again that the reason she has not voted on this issue is because she does not agree with John Howard's ten point plan. She has a one point plan on Wik and native title - get rid of it.
David Oldfield yesterday again defended Pauline Hanson's parliamentary record saying that she is "there to make a difference, not to make a record". However News Limited try to vilify her this point they cannot dispute. Pauline Hanson has made a change and given the Australian voter new hope.
Heather Hill set to take the state seat of Ipswich
One Nation's state leader Heather Hill is set to take the state seat of Ipswich the ALP have confirmed. Yesterday I spoke to Heather Hill who has campaigned strongly in her seat. This includes door knocking, distributing leaflets and meeting the people.
The incumbent ALP member has been very slack and at this late stage it is very likely that Heather will take the seat off him.
On Thursday the Queensland Times have called on all Ipswich candidates to a public debate.
One Nation candidates Heather Hill, Jack Paff and Colene Hughes have decided to boycott the meeting after the papers editor, Mark Hinchliffe, published a number of very biased editorials against the party. This is of grave concern to the party as Hinchliffe willl chair the "public debate" and his journalists will ask the candidates questions.
Yesterday State Director Peter James wrote the following letter to the Queensland Times when confirming that One Nation was going to boycott the debate:
The Editor
Queensland Times
Debate Thursday Evening 4th June 1998
The local candidates representing Pauline Hanson's One Nation have chosen not to participate in the debate scheduled for the evening of 4th June 1998 if you are chairing the meeting. If an impartial chairperson such as Mark Edwards or John Hunt were appointed, Heather Hill would attend to represent One Nation. There is also concern that questions should originate from the floor, not from journalists in the gallery.
Your consistent editorial derision of One Nation and the Queenslanders who are One Nation supporters signals your personal inability to be impartial in either the conduct of reporting of a staged event such as this.
Yours sincerely,
Peter James
State Director
Pauline Hanson's One Nation
Australian Press Council dismiss Balson's complaint
It has become clear to me that the Australian Press Council (APC) no longer represents Australians. It mirrors the voice of the major political parties and media barons.
While I waited to be heard just over ten days ago, a member of the committee asked the newspaper representative in a case involving allegations of racial discrimination, "Is there a degree of animosity in your paper against this group?"
Readers need to be aware that as far as the APC is concerned this only applies to ethnic groups, not mainstream Australians.
Here is an extract from their adjudication received yesterday: (reproduced in full here)
The Australian Press Council has dismissed a complaint made by Scott Balson against The Courier Mail. Mr Balson’s complaint arose from articles in the Monitor section of The Courier Mail of 21 and 28 March 1998. These were bylined opinion pieces written by Peter Charlton relating to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).
MAI not quite Dead but apparently dying...
On the subject of the MAI the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCT) has pronounced it "theoretically" dead with the following recommendations included in their report:
Australia not sign the final text of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment unless and until a thorough assessment has been made of the national interest and a decision is made that it is in Australia's interest to do so.
Let us remember that it was the like's of the JSCT Chairman, Bill Taylor, and that intellectual prostitute Peter Charlton who tried to present the view that the MAI was "good for Australia".
Full background to the MAI and Pauline Hanson's major role in its defeat here.
Patriot games
Extract from The Age (1997 article):
UGLY scuffles between Pauline Hanson protesters and her supporters, who include menacing National Front youths with trademark cropped hair, are the most common images of One Nation Party launches.
Media coverage of this week's Adelaide launch showed police dragging away angry young men, riot-protected horses forming a wall against threatening crowds, distressed girls injured by the crush of hatred outside the convention centre, eggs hurled at windows and enough abuse to make average Australians uncomfortable.
While these scenes in the sedate and plain streets of a west Adelaide suburb provide easy footage and photographs for the media, it is what was happening inside the European Convention Centre that ought to be of most concern to Australia's established political parties.
Because inside, 600 mainly middle-aged men and women - ordinary folk, with ordinary ambitions and fears - were clinging to Ms Hanson's words. They whooped and cheered and whistled and clapped with enough sincerity to dispel any notion that Ms Hanson will fulfil the hope of many and simply fade away.
Indonesia revolt was Net driven
By David L. Marcus, Globe Staff, 05/23/98
WASHINGTON - As rebellions broke out across Indonesia this month, protesters did not have tanks or guns. But they had a powerful tool that wasn't available during the country's previous uprisings: the Internet.
Bypassing the government-controlled television and radio stations, dissidents shared information about protests by e-mail, inundated news groups with stories of President Suharto's corruption, and used chat groups to exchange tips about resisting troops. In a country made up of thousands of islands, where phone calls are expensive, the electronic messages reached key organisers.
''This was the first revolution using the Internet,'' said W. Scott Thompson, an associate professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Thompson, like many academics who follow developments in Indonesia, kept track of the dissidents' communications with one another from thousands of miles away.
New technologies have changed the ways the world learns about a fast-changing political crisis. As Chinese troops quashed a democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the dissidents communicated with the outside world by fax, and TV networks used satellites to send out chilling footage. The same year, thanks to West German television, many East Germans learned that the Berlin Wall was being toppled.
Details of a Russian coup in 1991 spread by fax and a primitive version of the Internet, and a year later CNN sent images of a military uprising in Thailand around the world.
Thanks to the Internet, Thompson said, Indonesian activists circumvented press censorship. In one chat group, he said, participants circulated inspiring accounts of the 1986 ''peoples' power'' rebellion in the Philippines.
Some of the messages simply gave encouragement. Last week, in an America Online chat group about Asia, a correspondent nicknamed ''Asia Son'' urged Indonesians to keep denouncing President Suharto's corruption and cronyism. ''One or two people saying that [are] easily dragged away and silenced,'' Asia Son wrote. ''One or two million doing it is not so easy.''
The same day, in broken English, another correspondent urged looters not to pick on Indonesia's ethnic Chinese minority: ''Why are they always the victim when there is a riot? ... All they do is make a honest living. They work hard and when you worked hard you deserve success.''
As Indonesia heated up this week, Abigail Abrash, an Asia specialist at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington, stayed in constant touch with friends in Jakarta and other Indonesian cities. She sent them summaries of the American news coverage of the uprisings. Abrash received front-line reports from students occupying Indonesia's parliament building. From what she read, it seemed that someone brought a laptop inside and went on line while surrounded by armed troops.
Making the
news" -
The amazing growth in One Nation support nationally, continues:
| Party | May 29-31 | May 15-17 | May 1-3 | Apr17-19M | Mar 22-29 | Mar 13-15 | Feb 27-Mar 1 | Feb 13-15 | Jan 30-Feb1 |
| Coalition | 43 | 46 | 43 | 41 | 41 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 44 |
| ALP | 40 | 39 | 41 | 41 | 41 | 44 | 45 | 43 | 40 |
| One Nation | 7 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| Democrats | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| Greens | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Others | 6 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
Subject: Education
---------------------
* Since the Dawkins 'reforms' of higher education, any dill can be a BA.
I know, because though not an academic, I was once asked to mark first year
university papers. When I inquired what to do about students who were illiterate
I was advised, 'Well, hmm, if you can get the gist of what they mean, hmm,
you should give them the benefit of the doubt, hmmm'. So much for intellectual
standards.
I was disgusted. To my eternal shame I complied and 'passed' students who
were truly illiterate. But because of my critical attitude I was never again
asked to mark. The Department will say I was not asked again because I did
it badly the first time; I would say I was not asked again because I embarrassed
the Department. In any case, as a non-academic why was I invited to mark
papers in the first place? Why don't students get their papers marked by
their lecturers? I am sure that they expect such a 'service'.
* While not necessarily supporting One Nation, many educated people strongly
support Pauline Hanson's right to have her say and to form a political party.
I am firmly in that category as are three other (tertiary educated) siblings.
* The word 'education' is not synonymous with professional training. Educated
people do not brag about qualifications, precisely because education is not
the same as training. So such self-righteous, self-styled 'tertiary educated'
people as poor Therese Theile, who crow about their intellectual superiority
merely display for all the world to see that they are arrogant ignoramuses.
So-called ordinary Australians can see that.
* Everybody is 'tertiary-educated' these days. Once it was only the town
pastor and doctor who were university educated. These days everybody participates
in post school courses, which is how I would describe Therese Theile's 'tertiary
education'. Keeping everybody at school till they are 18, and then encouraging
them to participate in 'tertiary-education' so as to keep them out of the
unemployment statistics is a good strategy by governments. And it is justified
by pointing out that tertiary educated people enjoy a far lesser unemployment
rate. What is never mentioned is that tertiary educated people often comprise
the ranks of taxidrivers, waiters, etc. In other words they muscle out the
early school leavers who once would have filled these positions. But surely
you don't need a degree to drive a taxi, or to be a waiter?
Antonia Feitz
Subject: Alex Mitchell Sydney Sun-Herald
Further to Antonia's excellent suggestion re Alex and Co., i thought that
once they were feeling relaxed and comfortable after the Prozac and Valium,
Alex and friends may like to top up on Viagra , then go ......climb into
the closet with themselves.
Regards
Subject: Borbidge's bad case of sorrymania
Oh puke! While peeling the spuds tonight I just heard Rob Borbidge say on
ABC radio's current affairs programme PM: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry!
Sorry we weren't tough enough blah blah blah..."
As most Australians won't have a bar of this apology (millennial?) mania,
it looks like he has been badly advised. Yippee. Like Halley's comet a few
years ago, the inaugural 'Sorry Day' was a bit of a fizzer too. Even the
Courier Mail noted that it was in the main supported only by the media,
politicians, academics and churchpersons of all genders and sexual orientations.
Lucky Pauline Hanson.
Antonia Feitz
In their attempts to discredit Pauline Hanson, the PC brigade has constantly
perpetrated the potent myth that educated people do not support Pauline Hanson.
They think that by this tactic they will shame people into thinking, "Well,
I'm not educated, but as all educated people are against her ..." The purveyors
of this myth have made some very big mistakes which are obvious to ordinary
Australians.
Steve Nichols
What is happening at Fairfax should be of great concern to all Australians. Now under the leadership of Packer stooge Brian Powers this "independent" media group is nothing more than an extension of Packer's spheres of influence and power.
Powers is wasting no time in trying to find a Packer-friendly buyer for Brierley Investments Limited 20+% of the media group. When this happens the net of media control will be firmly wrapped around every Australian's neck.
There is one thing for sure, when Pauline Hanson's One Nation gains power the media barons will be forced to divest their business to new unrelated shareholders to the benefit of journalists, the Australian people and democracy.
The one thing left to do then is to have an inquiry into the deals being done between media powerbrokers and politicians with criminal charges being laid where necessary.
Wonder how Kerry Packer would enjoy some time with Alan Bond behind bars.... maybe they could compare notes!
Another perfect day in paradise.
Have a good one.
Recent stories exclusive to (how to) subscribe/rs of the Australian National News of the Day:
Queensland candidates
gather in Gympie - 31st May
1998
Political Correctness
and "racism" exposed.- 30th May 1998
Taking on News
Limited at the Australian Press Council in Sydney.- 23rd May 1998
Launch of One Nation's
Queensland leadership.- 22nd May 1998
Protest over
closure of National Australia Bank branch in Ipswich - 21st May
1998
Pauline Hanson meets the people of Blair - 20th May 1998
Unethical trifecta
expose Courier Mail's intellectual prostitutes - 9th May 1998
MIGA - son of MAI
exposed - 8th May
Just me and Pauline - 5th May
One Nation breakfast
- 4th May
Just who are the
Mont Pelerin
Society - 3rd May
The Internet and
the DEATH of the MAI - 30th April
Launch of Pauline
Hanson's re-election campaign - 29th April
Second One Nation
protest surprises Bob McMullan - 28th April
Sultan
of Brunei buys up big tracks of Australia - then negotiates Indonesian
"settlements" 25th April
Maritime
Union of Australia win in the Federal Court 22nd April
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