Thanks Pauline, but Australia is still a great country

Australians are engaged with the world around them. Many Australians do vital work in the region in development under various programs for government and non-government organisations. Australian graduates also do useful work as youth ambassadors.

The third reason why Hanson is wrong is that migration hasn’t changed the core values of the nation. There might be a few politicians and media commentators willing to play off some nasty under-currents, but Australia is still the land of the “fair go”. That commitment to egalitarianism is a common trait in this country. It has not been diminished by demographic changes. Nor has it been diminished by the attempts of some politicians to build up an insider-outsider culture for their own political gain. The best evidence of this is the success of migrants and the uptake of higher education across the board by young Australians.

Higher education is now open to more Australians than at any time in our nation’s history. We still have a way to go in ensuring that each young Australian has the opportunity to attend university. But the growth in universities since the 1980s and our commitment to maintaining regional universities means that more Australians are getting that chance. Leaving aside our brief and perhaps financially irresponsible period of free education, this is a better deal than the mythical glory days of the university when you needed to be either extremely intelligent, in which case you may have got a scholarship, or to have attended an elite private school, in order to get a place at university.

Pauline Hanson tried to divide Australia. She made some people feel bad about being Australians. She tried to pass off blatantly racist statements as genuine contributions to public debate. Thankfully most Australians are too smart to fall for that.

Hanson enjoyed a brief political career playing off the fears of ordinary Australians in relation to immigration. At the time Australia was emerging from the 1990 recession. The economy had undergone structural change and a sizeable number of people had lost their jobs while still in their prime working years. Many of these people were genuinely looking for a voice in Australian politics. When the economy began to grow again, largely due to our openness to trade, they abandoned Hanson and came back into the mainstream.

Hanson peddled myths about immigration. She mixed a dash of truth with liberal helpings of falsity and exaggeration. She preyed on fears about migrants taking jobs away. She had a bit of luck in that she rose to prominence when the tail-end of the 1990 recession was still being felt and when the realities of globalisation and the new-economy-old economy divide were beginning to be understood. For example, it is true that globalisation has winners and losers - skilled workers win and the unskilled workers generally lose. Though, this would also be true of a closed economy as well. Most Australian workers have skills of some sort, but people who are relatively lowly skilled, can be easily displaced by an influx of labour. But at the same time it is equally true that more people means more demand for goods and services which in turn leads to more jobs. Hanson never mentioned that last part.

Ultimately Pauline Hanson failed as a politician because she wasn’t good enough to cut it at that level. Her policies would have been disastrous for Australia. Her suggestion of simply “printing more money” would have induced inflation. If she actually had shut us off from trading with other nations we would not be enjoying today’s prosperity. China and India would not be buying our natural resources and we wouldn’t be able to buy cheap imported goods. International trade has made us wealthier and international engagement is enriching.

As an academic, I cannot help but think that if Pauline Hanson had gone to university and actually met people from a range of different backgrounds that she might have had a different outlook on life. I am not for a moment suggesting that a university education is the be all and end all. You do not need a university education to be economically successful and a lot of intelligent people do not have and do not need a university education. Not everybody who goes to university is outward looking and lots of well-travelled and open-minded people have never set foot in a university. But if Hanson had gone to university she might have been taught to substantiate her arguments thereby curing her tendency to make wild ambit claims. She might even have had a year abroad and maybe met people from other countries. She could even have gone to my alma mater and enrolled in Asian Studies and maybe picked up some courses in basic macroeconomics. The possibilities are endless.

So Pauline Hanson can leave Australia, deriding us as she goes. But she leaves a nation with immense potential. We have a lot of talent coming through the ranks. They are heading on to bigger and better things. We gave Pauline Hanson a pretty good run. For somebody who knew very little she profited quite a bit from her ignorance and outspoken nature. I suspect that the real reason she’s leaving is because she can’t milk her celebrity any further. The free ride is over, though this latest saga will no doubt help her to sell her house.

Soutphommasane writes that the legacy of Hanson can be seen in the tattooed youths who draped themselves in the Australian flag at Cronulla in 2005, just as Hanson did in 1997. But those youths don’t represent the best of this country. For the record, Hanson was mirroring Cathy Freeman’s pose of a few years earlier. My most vivid recollection of the Pauline Hanson era was a photograph of a white Australian surfer leaping into the water while carrying his surfboard. On the board he had written, “One Nation: No Explanation. The ugly Australian does not speak for me.” I remember that because it was a kind gesture. It was a reminder that the odd bigot does not speak for an entire nation. When Hanson goes I’m going to hang onto that memory.