
Pauline Hanson has been voted back in. And Australia needs to stop and listen.
It’s been 18 years since the One Nation leader found popularity with her views on anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism.
She gained global fame for her grass-roots conservative right wing sound bites. She was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.
Now, the former fish and chip shop owner – who wants to ban the burqa, install surveillance in all Mosques and prevent Muslim people from being sworn in to Parliament under the Qur’an – has the votes of more than 344,000 Australians behind her for representation in the Senate so far.
And we need to listen to them.
Because there is major discontent happening in Australia. Belief and confidence in the two major parties is at an all time low.
It’s more important than ever to figure out why.
Not so we give voice to ignorance, racism, xenophobia or blatant hateful discrimination – so we can form a bloody government.
We can’t even form a minority government at this point, let alone a majority one.
So why are people voting for a woman who spouts some of the most widely condemned ideologies in modern Australian politics?
Not only do more than 344,000 people who gave their vote to One Nation feel like no one is representing them – they feel like no one is listening to them.
Watch: Pauline Hanson puts the ‘media on notice.’ Post continues after video.
“There’s no doubt that there’s been some kind of repressed conservative vote that’s gone to Pauline Hanson. It will be very important to see how that has happened and why that has happened,” former Liberal Senator Helen Coonan told ABC.
“[Pauline Hanson’s] vote probably represents voters that have been parked somewhere for a very long time, a large number of years, and they’re obviously conservative voters who feel that our side of the record are not listening to them.”
It’s very clear that Pauline Hanson is the only thing that comes close to someone who her voters feel will bring to government issues that identify what they want, what they fear and what they are talking about.