RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Hanson policies will now, unavoidably, be brought into the mainstream political conversation. Hitherto, the media has chosen to treat her and her policies as “racism and bigotry” (they aren’t), “divisive” (code for “intolerable for us Leftists”) and as a butt for sex  gibes.

The ABC has just  now displayed a caricature of her as “Pauline Pantsdown”. The ABC’s only pretext for this crudity is “Simon Hunt’s Pauline Pantsdown character (right) was popular in the 1990s.”

Somehow I can’t imagine our ABC running an equivalent caricature of Labor’s Penny Wong as “Penny Pantsdown”, ditto Julia Gillard.

Expect new ABC managing director, Michelle Guthrie, to crack down hard on her myrmidons responsible for this sexist crudity against Hanson. Expect feminist Anne Summers to fly to Hanson’s defence any minute now. Expect ex-General David Morrison, Australian of the Year, to issue a new missive deploring ABC sexism – as he says, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Oh, and expect pigs to fly. The ABC illustration, published apropos of nothing at all, is below.

Actually, worse things have been done to Hanson by way of misogynist abuse. On March 15, 2009, while she was in her final week’s campaign as an independent for the Queensland State election, News Corp’s Sunday Telegraph and four other Murdoch tabloids published nude photographs purporting to be of Pauline Hanson in 1975. The papers paid a paparazzo $15,000 for them. Hanson’s election bid was defeated amid taunts and mockery, but the pictures of “Hanson” were manifestly fakes. In May Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen published a signed three-paragraph apology to her saying, “We have learnt a valuable lesson”. She obtained an out of court settlement.

Hanson is no longer easy prey. She is very likely to have as her running mate in the Senate the prominent climate sceptic Malcolm Roberts. He has been project leader for a sceptic think-tank, the Galileo Movement, founded by Case Smit and John Smeed.[i]

Roberts  is an engineering honors graduate and MBA from Chicago Graduate School of Business.  He is a one-time underground-coal miner and project executive, and his primary motive for joining Hanson is the fight against global warmists. The Galileo website says Roberts had been “statutorily responsible for thousands of people’s lives based on his knowledge and real-world experience of atmospheric gases, including carbon dioxide.”

Roberts explains his move to the Hanson party: “She is not as the media and political opponents have portrayed. Pauline is intelligent, quick, honest, courageous and persistent. We are passionate about bringing back our country.”

Anything is possible among Senate minor candidates and Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats includes up-front warming sceptics[ii] and a sceptical/agnostic view of the warming panic.  This includes a halt to warmist propaganda in school.

What a conundrum for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his side-kick, Greg Hunt, who  brought their faux carbon tax into operation last week, under the emissions trading label. Turnbull  said last month that Hanson “is not a welcome presence on the Australian political scene.” She responded reasonably that this was the electors’ call, not Turnbull’s.

What a conundrum for Tony Abbott, who organized the funding for the legal persecution of Hanson, claiming she had committed electoral irregularities. Hanson  in 2003 was sentenced to three years gaol for fraud and served eleven weeks in maximum security, including some time in solitary confinement. In November, 2003, the Court of Appeal quashed her conviction but she was still left $500,000 out of pocket.

What a conundrum for The Greens, with their agenda to suicidally switch Australian energy to those expensive unreliables, wind and solar.  Hanson outpolled the Greens in the Senate on Queensland first preferences, 9.15 per cent to 7.57 per cent.

And unfortunately, what a conundrum for economically-literate climate sceptics. That’s because Hanson’s party platform includes not only an anti-fracking agenda but the most primitive of protectionist policies. Those policies are designed to re-erect tariff  walls, prop up hopeless manufacturers, cancel free-trade agreements and reject the globalization which has brought unprecedented living standards to developed and Third World countries alike.

Whatever, Hanson’s main climate policy is brilliant. Here it is (I’ve re-ordered the points somewhat):

• Hold a Royal Commission (or similar) into the corruption of climate science and identify whether any individual or organisation has misled government to effect climate and energy policy.
• Remove all subsidies and financial advantages offered to the renewable energy industry and make them compete on an even playing field with other energy sources.
• Support reliable, low-cost power generation. This has previously been Australia’s strongest competitive advantage.
• Establish an independent Australian science body replacing the UN IPCC to report on climate science. It will be the beyond politicisation and be the basis of Australian policy on insurance and response to weather events.
• One Nation will oppose all taxes levied on carbon dioxide, be it a flat carbon tax or a floating emissions trading scheme…
• Abolish the Renewable Energy Target (RET) and support practical cost-effective research into energy efficiency, reliability and dependability.

• Cancel all agreements obliging Australia to pay for foreign Climate Action and payment to the United Nations and foreign institutions…

• Remove from the education system the teaching of a one-sided view of climate science. Teaching of climate science will begin in secondary school and will be based on the scientific method of scepticism until proven.
• Environmental impacts to be assessed on the use of empirical scientific evidence, not activists or non-government organisations pushing ideology and political agendas.
• Review the Bureau of Meteorology to ensure independence and accountability for weather and climate records, including public justification of persistent upward adjustments to historical climate records.
• Review the CSIRO to ensure independence and accountability and determine whether funding has influenced the direction and results of CSIRO’s positions on the climate claims. Funding from the UN in particular will be probed for an agenda not consistent for what is best for Australians.
• Ensure that all climate, energy and environmental policy decisions, requiring a scientific component, are based on the scientific method and empirical evidence. All decisions will be based on an economic, social and environmental assessment with environmental issues not automatically put ahead of humanity or economic realities.
• Support renewable energy that does not impact on the environment and encourage research in the ability to store energy at affordable cost to households and businesses.
• The wind industry must compensate all residents who have been proven to suffer from Wind Turbine Syndrome and any residents where the presence of wind turbines have negatively effected the price of their home.

The platform says,

Climate change has and will continue to be used as a political agenda by politicians and self interest groups or individuals for their own gain. We cannot allow scare mongering by people such as Tim Flannery, who make outlandish statements and are not held accountable. Climate change should not be about making money for a lot of people and giving scientists money.  

[Emissions Trading Systems are] not going to wave a magic wand and stop nature changing the climate. It will only make it harder for Australian families and businesses to make ends meet…

…Instead of so-called ‘alternative energies’ that are really ‘alternatives to energy’, we will work to reduce energy prices, and bring back dependability and reliability through environmentally responsible  energies. Low cost energy enables efficiency and productivity that generate wealth to protect the environment.

Hanson’s policies also include signing out of duplicitous UN treaties and agendas, zero net immigration (i.e. immigration equivalent to annual departures), and tough German and Japanese-style language tests for citizenship and welfare, which would be obtained only after five years’ residence. Muslim immigration and mosque-building projects would be halted. [iii] “We don’t want or need migrants bringing their problems, laws, culture and opposing religious beliefs on us,” her website says.  “If we do not make the necessary changes now to stop the advancement of Islam in Australia, there will be no hope in the future.”

Hanson’s huge polling in House seats she contested suggests many Australian voters are doing the “Brexit” thing, giving the finger to their politically-correct overlords. (Unlike the major parties, she campaigns for, not against, freedom of speech.) She ran candidates in 12 out of 30 Queensland seats, gaining 5.34% statewide. Her best results included the Lockyer Valley (21 per cent), Hinkler, based on Bundaberg (19.6 per cent), Flynn, south and west of Gladstone, (nearly 17 per cent), and Wide Bay, covering Maryborough and Gympie, (nearly 15 per cent). In Townsville’s seat of Herbert, she got 13%, compared with the Greens’ 6.1%.

All that is left to say is congratulations to Malcolm Turnbull for his transforming of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party into a national force and a megaphone for climate sanity.

Tony Thomas’s new book That’s Debatable – 60 Years in Print, is available here