There’s a lot of time and money invested in Australia’s Far-Right, and a lot of that money comes from backers with deep coffers — deep enough to buy Pauline Hanson a sexy new plane, writes Tom Tanuki.
‘Australia Marches’ organiser Scott Challen hoped a post-Anzac Day rally in Canberra would turn out like another successful Convoy to Canberra situation, with thousands descending on Parliament to voice their support for ‘net-negative migration’ (read: mass deportations).
They’d just held a 26th January march in Brisbane in an effort to recast their beloved national day as a day to complain — namely to demand ‘net-negative migration’ (read: mass deportations). Their intention, then, was to steal a little Anzac Day valour in the name of achieving similarly average success.
An ABC interviewer asked Scott some questions that I believe they mostly did not bother to broadcast. Their first question:
“Do you think the majority of Australians are on board with your agenda of ‘net-negative migration’?”
Scott’s reply:
“Who cares? I don’t care if they’re not on board with it. They will be eventually.”
I think this bullish, cavalier attitude works very well for a Far-Right political campaign when you’re doing really well. When you’re not, it makes you look a bit delusional.
Australian mainstream media across print, digital and broadcast, the vast majority of which is owned by News Corp and Nine Entertainment, recently trumpeted a couple of polls that recorded One Nation as robbing the dismally unpopular Coalition of a fair share of its votes.
This polling pointed only to a fracturing of the right, disturbing none of the nation’s current real majority consensus and leaving Labor well ahead. Still, we were bombarded by tales of the great rise of One Nation’s band of undying populist charlatans.
Then we found out they weren’t doing all that well, and that was less popular an item of news. All that says is that their support is volatile — there’s no doubting that polling support for One Nation has surged since the last election. But why do we remain so quiet when their energy wavers?
Maybe we’re busy documenting the fact that Gina Rinehart bought Pauline Hanson an aeroplane.
It’s a silver Cirrus G7, whatever that means, and it looks like someone rich bought it because they did.
Pauline said on X:
“I’ve got a new plane. Yes I’m super happy. Yes it’s fast. Yes it’s amazing. Yes it’s going to annoy the Guardian. Yes it's sexy.”
Pauline also took time to show off $2 million in donations she received, about half of which came from employees of Rinehart companies. This was after Hanson had been found to "forget" to declare a string of gifts from her best mate.
Gina naturally leans hard on Hanson’s chookfeed Far-Right populism in the hope of warding off the rise of left-wing populism in Australia, which spearheads calls to tax the mining and gas sector in line with their overwhelming profits. That’s worth an aeroplane.
But when Hanson falters in volatile polls, that really only demonstrates she’s nabbed the already-failing Coalition vote, what does an aeroplane do? To me, it makes her look smug and delusional. Like someone who can’t keep up with their mortgage showing off a rental Lamborghini.
Where has the energy of the Australian radical right gone? It hasn’t fled to Ben Roberts-Smith, for all the hype and ceaseless social media commentary surrounding his recent murder charge.
A rally organised in Melbourne’s CBD last Sunday by neo-Nazi groupuscule the National Workers Alliance was set to explode in attendance, if Facebook comments sections were any judge. (They had originally planned it for before Ben’s bail hearing, but delayed it upon the request of the family, according to neo-Nazi group leader Matt Trihey).
It didn’t explode in attendance. It had between 100 and 200 people. A large contingent of them were masked former members of the National Socialist Network. Bystanders booed the neo-Nazis from the footpath. The Australian described it variously as a "flop" and a "fizzer" across print and digital.
Similarly, Scott Challen’s Australia Marches event drew a couple of hundred people.
'Australia Marches' is a well-oiled and generously funded fracture group. They split from the failing March for Australia, which was ostensibly held over the twin fault lines of support for the now-defunct National Socialist Network and the archipelago of Australian Far-Right political parties. (Scott wanted a little distance from the former and to cosy up with the latter.)
They paid for enormous flags laid out across the huge lawn in front of Parliament, with a couple nearly covering its entire width. And they’d even shelled out on thousands of flags to hand out to every attendee. This event cost a lot.
Anticipating being asked by the ABC interviewer why it was a flop and a fizzer, Scott opened the conversation by addressing the elephant in the room:
“We got a great number of people. And of course, we had 4,000 flags in the ground as well, that represented the 4,000 people that either couldn’t either afford to get here or were not able to because of the interstate distance. And let’s face it, fuel costs in the past couple of weeks ruined everybody.”
What else happened there? Not much.
Someone sang ‘Great Southern Land’. And Pauline Hanson, Matt Canavan and Bob Katter spoke to the tiny congregation via an incredible speaker system fit to entertain 4,000 invisible people, while Scott bounced around the front of the crowd. During Pauline’s speech some cooker yelled at her that she needs to address chemtrails.
White nationalist academic Dr Stephen Chavura wore an Aussie flag singlet and played guitar, which felt a bit like a personal crisis of some sort. Far-Right Destiny Church members flew in to do a haka. Later on, they dunked Scott in a big bathtub of water to baptise him for some reason.
You can feel the excess dripping off events like this. And when they fail, it’s a little like… buying an aeroplane for a minor party that’s not performing as well as the hype feted it to.
There’s a lot of time and money invested in Australia’s Far-Right, and a lot of that money comes from backers with deep coffers. But when it’s all for nought and suddenly their energy trails off, are we taking as much time to acknowledge their fall as we do to breathlessly warn everyone about their rise?
Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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