The far right continues to make gains in Australia
Labor’s trouncing of the Liberals in the federal election represented a clear popular rejection of former Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s partial embrace of Trumpian politics. Nonetheless, the extreme right, both within the Liberals and Nationals and outside of them, is far from disappearing from the political scene. It remains a threat to workers and all the oppressed and needs to be confronted.
The far right outside the Coalition parties, despite its fragmentation into about ten separate groups, maintained the significant gains from the 2022 elections on the back of the reactionary anti-vax and anti-lockdown protests. In the Senate, far-right outfits polled a combined 13.6 percent (almost 2 million votes)—up slightly from 13.3 percent in 2022.
The menagerie of extreme-right and semi-fascist parties—including One Nation, Trumpet of Patriots, Family First, People First, Libertarian Party, Citizens Party, the Christians and other fragments—is stridently pro-business, “free enterprise” and hostile to anything vaguely smacking of “progressiveness”. They all champion an array of racist, extreme nationalist, climate denialist, pro-nuke, anti-vax, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion and “anti-woke” policies.
The reactionary emphasis varied a bit. In some rural areas, vile Aboriginal bashing was at the fore (notably the Libertarian candidate who achieved sizeable votes in the area around Goondiwindi in Queensland). In others, the emphasis was on denouncing multiculturalism or wind farms or hostility to Labor’s “creeping communism” (if only!) or calls for a royal commission into COVID health measures.
The sadly resurrected Family First, running again after missing the last couple of elections, unsurprisingly emphasised policies to “encourage and incentivise monogamous, heterosexual marriage” and opposition to “LGBTIQA+ gender fluid ideology”. Its top candidate in NSW, Lyle Shelton, was the leader of the failed campaign against marriage equality.
But Family First also embraced a long list of other standard far-right policies: cutting government spending, opposing multiculturalism, raising military spending to 3 percent of GDP, exiting the Paris climate accords, supporting nuclear power, cutting immigration, encouraging small and family businesses, banning Muslim migrants and an emphasis on “reading, writing and arithmetic” in schools. As a bonus, the party also encouraged shooting sports. Who and what to shoot was left unspecified.
A newcomer to the far-right gang is Gerard Rennick’s People First party. Aided by his profile as a sitting senator, and running on a joint ticket with Katter’s Australian Party, Rennick gained 4.7 percent of the Queensland Senate vote, challenging One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts on 7.1 percent for the final seat.
Like numerous other far-right leaders, including Pauline Hanson, Bernie Finn (Family First’s Victorian Senate candidate) and Craig Kelly (heading the joint Libertarian/HEART/People First NSW ticket), Rennick is a product of the Liberal Party, forming People First only after losing his Liberal National endorsement last year.
Rennick almost makes Hanson seem moderate. When still a Liberal, he advocated closer ties with Putin’s Russia because “they’re part of the West; they drink, they’re Christians, they play soccer, they’re Caucasian”.
In 2020 on Sky News, Rennick denounced the supposed “communist takeover of the classroom and the bedroom”, which he argued was an even bigger threat than the Chinese government. He also claimed Labor’s proposed free child care for three-year-olds was a conspiracy “to strengthen the role of the state”.
Rennick is a fanatical climate change denier, claiming that the Bureau of Meteorology tampered with data to “perpetuate global warming hysteria”. One of People First’s core policies is to remove all government references to climate change and abolish the Climate Change Department, along with the Multicultural Department.
People First also calls for denying entry to people from “radical nations”—they don’t mean Trump’s America—expelling all “illegal” immigrants, forcing foreign-born citizens to wait ten years to access Centrelink , embracing nuclear power and ending funding for Welcome to Country.
Nonetheless, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation remains the largest reactionary outfit with just over 40 percent of the total far-right Senate vote. It benefited from the demise of Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and the Liberal Democrats to improve its first preference vote by 1.3 percent to 5.7 percent nationally.
Hanson also benefited from the decision of the Liberals and Nationals to preference One Nation, something that even the crusty old conservative John Howard refused to do. This was a clear message from Dutton that Hanson’s vile racist rantings were an acceptable part of mainstream politics.
As a consequence of the preference deal, the NSW electorate of Hunter was turned into a runoff between One Nation and Labor. Thanks to the Nationals’ preferences and those of far-right fragments, One Nation candidate Stuart Bonds went from a primary vote of 16 percent to 41 percent in the two-party preferred count.
The Hansonites gained two new senators—one in NSW and the other in Western Australia—for a total of four. They were aided by a more favourable preference flow this election and in NSW gained most of the Legalise Cannabis voters’ preferences.
One of the new senators for this party that supposedly stands up for hard-done-by battlers is Tyron Whitten, the boss of a Western Australian construction company employing 1,000 workers. The other is Warwick Stacey, who, in true Trumpian fashion, called to “make Australia strong again”.
After being “educated” at exclusive Sydney Grammar and Britain’s Royal Military College Sandhurst, Stacey became a troop commander in the British 22 SAS regiment. On leaving the army, he worked as a military consultant in the Middle East. Despite these years serving British imperialism, Stacey demands migrants “respect Australian values” and “the country’s way of life”.
The far-right racist and fascist-style vote is disproportionately concentrated in rural areas, various regional centres and on the periphery of some major cities. In the Senate, it was strongest in Queensland (18.2 percent), followed by WA (13.5 percent), SA (12.4), NSW (12.3), Victoria (11.9), Tasmania (11.5) and lowest in the ACT (1.2 percent), where One Nation did not even bother to run.
In the Northern Territory, the combined far-right vote fell from 15.2 percent to 10.2 percent in part because Trump lover and darling of the racists, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who headed the Country Liberal ticket, gobbled up some of the reactionary vote.
In regional Queensland, the far right obtained more than 25 percent in at least five House of Representatives seats, including 29 percent in Wright (Lockyer Valley, Beaudesert and Gold Coast hinterland), 27 percent in Flynn (Biloela, Blackwater, Emerald, Gladstone) and 25.6 percent in Maranoa (Chinchilla, Dalby, Goondiwindi, Kingaroy, Warwick). In many individual booths, the reactionaries obtained extremely high votes: 40 percent in Hatton Vale, 39.5 percent at the Blackwater pre-poll, 39 percent in Laidley, 36.6 percent in Miles, 35.3 percent in Grandchester, 34.5 percent at the Sarina pre-poll, and many more.
But it was not just Queensland. The far-right vote reached 28.8 percent in the western NSW seat of Parkes (with 38.8 at the Cobar pre-poll and 46.1 on the day), followed by 24.5 percent in Hunter (Hunter Valley) and 20.2 percent in Riverina plus another 4.8 percent for a right-wing independent.
In rural Victoria, the top far-right vote was in 21.7 percent in Nicholls (centred on Shepparton, including 35.4 percent at the Puckapunyal army base and 28.2 percent in polarised Broadford, just outside Melbourne, where the Greens got 12.6 percent and Labor 34.6 percent), 18.2 percent in Mallee and 17.7 percent in Gippsland.
Both the Liberals and the far right failed to break into outer-suburban working-class suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney. Indeed, in most of these areas, their votes fell.
An exception was the northern Melbourne seat of Scullin, where the far right polled 18.7 percent, up 1.3 percentage points. The far right also got a sizeable vote of 16.6 percent in the Sydney seat of Lindsay (Penrith and St Marys) where six far-right candidates ran, including old time Nazi Jim Saleam (1.1 percent), plus 14.4 percent in both Macarthur (Campbelltown) and Labor’s Ed Husic’s seat of Chifley (Mt Druitt and Quakers Hill).
So what are we to conclude from all this? First, that while the far right did not have a breakthrough this election, it is not going away.
Moreover, the far right’s Senate vote of almost 2 million understates the support for many of its appalling policies. There is only a smidgen of difference between the likes of Hanson and Rennick and the hard right of the Liberals and Nationals.
As well, the strong flow of preferences in NSW from Legalise Cannabis to One Nation indicates that many voters for protest parties are far from rejecting obnoxious racist politics.
This is all in a context in which Labor’s priorities are very clear. It is ruling for the big end of town, not workers.
With the union movement in a very weak state and tied to Labor’s coat-tails, rising discontent and disillusionment could provide a fertile breeding ground for the far right. We can’t be complacent.
So far in Australia, the far right has not been able to form one strong united party like the National Rally in France or develop one authoritative popular leader like Donald Trump. Pauline Hanson has been incapable of playing that role and has failed to build an active base in the major cities or among young people.
Moreover, the street-fighting fascist movement remains weak and mainly confined to the small openly Nazi National Socialist Network.
But we can’t assume that the far right will never get its act together. The experience of country after country in Europe, even in liberal Scandinavia, is that fascist-style politics can quickly make inroads.
We need to rebuild a fighting union movement to stand up for the interests of workers and the oppressed. We need to be prepared to confront far-right groups when they mobilise on the streets.
Most importantly, we need to build a socialist political alternative to the far right. A socialist movement that takes on the rich and powerful, that defends the rights of the mass of people and offers hope of a better world for humanity, not a bleak Trumpian dystopia.
