We must fight Hanson’s regressive monoculturalism

When Pauline Hanson gave her maiden speech calling for a rejection of multiculturalism in 1996, she was a marginal voice widely dismissed as an extremist.

When she called for a monocultural Australia at the National Press Club last week, she was equally extreme but much more dangerous.

In the intervening 30 years, populist movements that blame migrants and minorities for economic and social ills have gained traction across the Western world. The MAGA politics of Donald Trump, the Brexit isolationism of Nigel Farage, and the rise of far-right parties across Europe are all symptoms of a world that is retreating from globalism and rejecting the diversity and open-mindedness that characterised the last decades of the 20^th century.

In Australia, where multiculturalism has been deeply integrated and largely successful since its formal introduction by the Whitlam government in 1973, this movement has been relatively slow to gain a foothold.

But it is clearly doing so now. Hanson’s One Nation has just won its first House of Representatives seat, the watershed that precipitated her invitation to the Press Club. The Liberal Party, flailing electorally, has responded with language that is slightly subtler, but contains the same dog whistles about “putting Australian values at the heart of immigration policies”.

There are good reasons why this populist movement is gaining ground internationally, and those of us who are alarmed by it must be careful not to dismiss them. Faced with economic instability and massive change, traditionally powerful groups are losing ground. White men can no longer assume the right to the best jobs or the last word. Uncertainty is everywhere, from gender identity to technology. Raising the barricades is a natural response.