Health Implications of the Rise of One Nation

20 June 1998
The Queensland state election was held June 13 1998. Pollsters had predicted that Pauline Hanson's One Nation party would perform strongly, but expectations were exceeded on the night. One Nation have won 11 seats in the 89 seat parliament, and their newfound power may have serious health and social implications.

The early notoriety of Pauline Hanson stemmed from her vigorous opposition to assisting Aboriginal Australians. The claim that an "Aboriginal industry" bleeds the system is a central tenet of One Nation. They misrepresent public health targeting of the neediest groups as preferential treatment and seek dramatic reductions in funding and power for Aboriginal organizations. Aborigines already suffer easily the worst health status of any Australians with a life expectancy around 20 years under the national average. Reductions in funding health and housing services can only worsen this.

In addition, One Nation have pro-violence policies. They want to increase availability of powerful guns, when this increases gun-related violence and deaths. They want to legalise corporal punishment of children claiming the government is interfering with family discipline, when treating children violently is more likely to result in a violent child than a well-behaved one. They want to introduce the death penalty, when authorising the state to kill does not deter crime. They are aggressively nationalist, when there is abundant historical evidence of this leading to disaster.

Finally, One Nation's economic platform includes unrealistic policies which, if implemented, could harm Australia's ability to afford quality health services.

One Nation is anti-immigration, anti-black, anti-Asian, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-corporal punishment and aggressively nationalist. This is not the agenda of country people angry at years of being ignored by mainstream urban powerbrokers. This is an authoritarian and fascist agenda. It is driven by power hungry people using the proven technique of designating scapegoats, dividing the community and then imposing their will. Although, fortunately, one has to wonder whether their current candidates are competent to get the trains to run on time.