UNAUSTRALIAN is generally not a term I like to throw around but it is so tempting to use it against Pauline Hanson this week. After all, she is actually telling people not to buy Vegemite. She might as well be an American boycotting apple pie, an Italian shunning pizza or a Japanese snubbing sushi. Still, the motivation behind Hanson’s Vegemite ban is even more atypically Australian — she is driven by intolerance. Australian history surely has blemishes, but we stand out among nations for our relatively tolerant heritage and commitment to a fair go. In the past Hanson has tapped into worries about Asian immigration and entitlements for indigenous Australians, and now she has identified Muslim Australians as her next bogeyman. Her rhetoric is ugly — although not entirely unexpected — and should be tackled through open debate. The former federal MP, and founder of One Nation, is attempting yet another comeback in the Queensland state election. The fiery redhead has never been as foolish as her critics pretend; always basing her extreme views on real issues that create some understandable concerns. So it would be a mistake to demonise Hanson by calling her unAustralian (the term itself is anathema to most of us anyway). Back in the late 1990s stinging attacks helped to generate Hanson’s momentum — voters saw an attempt to shut down debate on the issues she raised. On the back of our recent freedom of speech debate, rebooted by the fallout from Paris’s Charlie Hebdo massacre, Hanson presents a challenge. Rather than attack her we should challenge her where she is wrong and welcome a debate about any real issues she identifies. A touchstone for Hanson’s new crusade is Halal registration. She says it should be illegal for companies to pay for Halal certification of their food products. “When I see 2.2 per cent of our population are Muslim in this country and yet the other 97.8 per cent are paying for this,” she rants. “I reject this.” This is the reason for her “I will not buy Vegemite,” pledge. If Hanson wants Muslim immigrants to assimilate you’d think she’d favour smoothing a Halal path to Vegemite on toast. Even aside from that silly paradox the anti-Halal campaign is ridiculous. Perhaps these registrations can sometimes be a rort but if companies are prepared to pay the fee for Halal labelling there is no problem. It can help them market to Muslim customers at home and can be essential for exporting to Muslim nations. The anti-Halal movement seems to be classically xenophobic and should be dismissed on logical grounds. Some of our supermarkets have kosher aisles and brands seek approval for all kinds of labels, from organic or gluten-free status to heart health and environmental ticks. Halal certification ought to be welcomed as another marketing tool. Hanson says Muslims “come here for a new life and I have no problem with that” but complains “we can’t sing Christmas carols because it offends others”. She also is “totally opposed to the burka”, claiming many women are forced to wear it. This is where her anti-Muslim rant comes up against the stifling effect of political correctness. We have seen attempts to downplay Christian references at Christmas but this is hardly the fault of Muslims — more likely it stems from the activism of bureaucratic secularists. But while most Australians would not be as strident as Hanson on the burka there is little doubt many worry that the covering of Muslim women is an open form of oppression. This is a legitimate issue for discussion, especially among feminists and Muslim communities, and Hanson shouldn’t be condemned simply for raising it. It also goes to her core complaint about lack of assimilation or how Muslims “will not change their ways but want to change our ways”. Again, most of us wouldn’t be so confrontational but a discussion about assimilation should not only be tolerated; it is desperately needed. The radicalisation of young Muslim men, born in our suburbs and educated under our freedoms, who have then gone overseas as jihadist Islamic State recruits, is of grave concern, especially to the majority of Muslims who are politically moderate. Shouting down Hanson, or demonising anyone who echoes her views, will not help. It will only confirm an unwillingness to confront the issues, and we have seen plenty of this national squeamishness lately. The contortions performed by many to deny the Islamist extremist motivation behind the Martin Place siege were extraordinary. This jihadist denialism suggests to the mainstream that the political class is incapable of handling obvious challenges — so it only fuels the fear Hanson aims to harness. The best way to combat One Nation fearmongering is to inject more frankness into our public debates. One person who did that this week was Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith in his compelling Australia Day address. He explained: “the freedoms and rights we’ve always fought for and won at great cost to our own are again under serious and continuing threat.” Roberts-Smith, now working in business, explained how our military are in the frontline of a battle against the “lethal forces of terror” and that Martin Place showed we were “neither remote nor immune” as he matter-of-factly listed it with 9/11, Bali, Paris and other attacks. “As Australians witness these things in the midst of our ordinary lives … reading about young people leaving the country to join a raging, borderless jihad,” he said, “the outlying world of Australian soldiers fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and Iraq seems to come within touching distance of domestic, civilian life.” He is right and, unsurprisingly, brave. Courage is not just needed on the frontline but in mustering the confidence to speak honestly against Islamist terrorism while simultaneously embedding our tradition of tolerance.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 21:31:57 +0000