Nationalist Party May Be Spoiler in Close Australian Election

Vegemite is a salty, black yeast paste that millions of Australians religiously spread on their breakfast toast.

The sticky substance, approached warily by those who do not live here, also is a kind of national symbol, or “icon” as the Australians call it, that helps define this island continent. For nearly half a century, Australians have been comforted by a bouncy radio-television commercial jingle, “Happy Little Vegemites,” that serves as a unifying national ditty.

But Vegemite’s takeover years ago by American multinational Philip Morris Co. produced a defensive nationalistic outcry that is key to the One Nation Party movement headed by populist Pauline Hanson, who calls herself Australia’s “mother.”

As Australians voted today in national elections, the One Nation Party, only a year old, is poised to be a spoiler in the tight race between conservative Prime Minister John Howard of the Liberal Party and Labor Party challenger Kim Beazley. Moreover, One Nation’s meteoric and controversial rise has caused both major political parties--which have alternated rule here since World War II--to adjust their positions on issues ranging from immigration to privatization of the national telephone company.

More than any previous Australian politician, Hanson, a former fish-and-chips shop owner from northeast Queensland state, has been able to harness the alienation and fears of rural and working-class populations, confused and embittered by economic globalization. Another key issue for Hanson is immigration, particularly from Asia, that has rapidly and radically changed the complexion of Australian society.

In Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, Chinese is now the second-most common language. One-third of Sydney’s 3.7 million people were born overseas. Australia’s once predominantly white English-speaking society is now as diverse as any American West Coast city.

Because of the ethnic issue raised by Hanson, the election is being watched closely across Asia and in Asian communities worldwide. In the last week of the campaign, Hong Kong television sent a crew to follow Hanson on the stump. Hanson’s pronouncements are covered extensively in the Asian press, where they are being scrutinized for signs that they could push Australia to further restrict its immigration policy.

Thursday night, only two days before the vote, a weary Hanson appeared before a small group of supporters at the Mt. Crosby Bowls Club, a lawn bowling club in a rural suburb of the eastern city of Brisbane. No Australian media were allowed, and she spent part of her time attacking the press.

“The media has tried me and sentenced me,” she said, receiving approving nods from the 80 men and women gathered in the clubhouse. The names of members on the walls reflected the all-white, Anglo-European composition of the club: Mathews, Jones, Gundy, McDougall, Warner, Grandison, Ball, Heck.

The term “multiculturalism”--favored by urban intellectuals--is despised by Hanson supporters, who see it as a threat to the Anglo, white Australian way of life.

“Migrants come up to me,” Hanson said, beginning to win the attention of the crowd, “they say they would die for this country. They say, ‘By God, we are Australians.’ They tell me, ‘We don’t want this country to be like the one we left.’ ”

The crowd began to stir. Some people applauded.

“That’s why they came here,” Hanson said. “They don’t want this country to be like the one they left. I tell them, ‘Come here. Join us. Be Australian. I welcome you as long as you give this country undivided loyalty.’ ”

The crowd applauded loudly.

Hanson’s party is unlikely to win more than a few seats in the Australian House of Representatives and, possibly, a handful in the proportionately elected Senate. Even Hanson’s own election in Queensland, where she shocked everyone with a surprising victory in 1996, is not assured.

However, under Australia’s complicated preferential voting system, her bloc could determine whether Howard, who heads a coalition government with the National Party, or Labor’s Beazley emerges as the victor.

“This is the first election I can recall that can go any direction because of the Hanson wild card tapping into the underground racist extreme,” said Western Australia state legislator Diana Warnock, a member of the Labor Party. Polls show One Nation Party candidates winning 6% to 13% of the vote.

To her supporters, Hanson’s remarkable and sudden rise to prominence is a political Cinderella story. The twice-divorced mother of four has been hailed as the “Evita of Ipswich,” the working-class Brisbane satellite where only two years ago she earned her living selling fried fish and hamburgers from a tiny, wood-frame shop.

“What she has been saying,” said Tony Dalby, a former railroad worker who bought the fish-and-chips shop from Hanson, “is basically what the silent majority has been thinking for years. That’s it in a nutshell.”

To her detractors, including Australia’s Aborigines, large immigrant populations and educated urban residents, she represents a throwback to the notorious days of the “White Australia” policy in effect here from the turn of the century until at least the 1960s.

“In Australian history,” commented Robert Manne, a politics professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, “no extreme right-wing party has ever been so favorably positioned as is the One Nation Party.”

Only three years ago, Hanson was a virtual unknown on the political landscape.

Hanson, 44, whose red hair and high cheekbones evokes the late American actress Lucille Ball, was first elected to public office in 1994 as a member of the local council in Ipswich, a blue-collar mining and railroad city 25 miles southwest of Brisbane.

In 1996, Hanson won nomination as the Liberal Party candidate for the lower house of parliament. Her nomination went virtually unnoticed until her opponents spotted a letter she had written to a local newspaper accusing Australia’s politicians of reverse racism in their affirmative action programs for Aborigines.

Liberal Party leaders ejected Hanson from the party, but she won election as an independent, reversing years of Labor Party domination in the district. Hanson quickly captured national attention in her maiden speech before the House of Representatives, complaining that Australia was being “swamped” by Asian immigrants.

“I come here not as a polished politician,” she said in a trembling voice, belied by her dark, fierce eyes, “but as a woman who has had her fair share of life’s knocks. My view on issues is common sense, and my experience as a mother of four, as a sole parent, and as a businesswoman running a fish-and-chip shop.”

The speech was universally condemned in the mainstream press and political circles. Yet it made her an instant heroine to many Australians who saw her as a quintessential anti-politician upsetting the doctrine of political correctness and multiculturalism. The criticism from the political establishment only enhanced her popularity.

In April 1997, she announced the creation of Paula Hanson’s One Nation Party. After facing loud and sometimes violent protests from anti-racism movements that grew up to challenge her, Hanson even videotaped a message to her followers, to be played in the event of her assassination.

But the Hanson phenomenon still was not taken seriously until June, when in Queensland State elections her party confounded political polls and won 23% of the vote, placing 11 candidates in the state parliament.

On the eve of the national election, Hanson and her party are again being discounted.

Some polls have shown One Nation support dropping below 6%. Most mainstream political analysts say the election will be determined mainly by voter rejection or acceptance of a controversial 10% national goods and services sales tax proposed by Howard, who also pledged corresponding reductions in personal income taxes.

However, other analysts, recalling the recent Queensland vote, note that one aspect of the Hanson phenomenon is that many voters are reluctant to acknowledge to pollsters that they intend to vote for her.

Rosewood is a quiet, tree-shaded community of 500 mostly white residents about 20 miles outside Ipswich. Most of the modest, wood-frame homes are built on stilts in the characteristic “Queenslander” style, which allows air to circulate under the house to help cool the residence during the hot season.

Main Street features a butcher shop advertising “Country Killed Meat.” The town beauty shop is named Neat and Trim Hair Design. There is a small Anglican church, a saddle shop and a trading store.

Economically, Rosewood has seen better days. The coal mine outside town closed a few years ago. So did the nearby woolen mills where many people worked.

In the late afternoon, menfolk and a few older women gathered at the Royal George Hotel, where the pub offers parimutuel betting. Several televisions, mounted above the bar, displayed races at various tracks. On one wall was a doctored photograph of Pauline Hanson with her smiling campaign photo superimposed over a naked woman’s body and titled: “Fun Nation Party.”

Paul Smith, a greyhound dog breeder, was unembarrassed about the photo montage but defensive about Hanson’s politics.

“The media’s got it all wrong,” Smith said, gripping a pint of lager beer. “She’s no racist. She just wants everything equal. I’m the same way. If a black man walks in here, I’ll drink with him. No problem at all.”

Sitting at a bench down the street with his middle-aged, physically disabled son was Bill Lawrence, a retired clerk with the Queensland Railway.

“The population here is middle-aged, set in their ways,” said Lawrence, 68. “They call a spade a spade here. A lot of people are dead set against minorities coming to the fore.”

“They need a wake-up call,” blurted his son.

“Pauline Hanson just overheard a lot of what was said by people,” Lawrence said, shushing his son. “She just repeated what people were saying, but it was very correct as far as the population is concerned. I fancy I’ll vote for her.”