Essentially programmers are amongst the last of all people to discover the benefits of the division of labour. Possibly because we systematically overestimate our own ability and underestimate other programmers.

“What Nick did was quite clever in its way.”

A nice way of saying Nick stuffed up.

In any case, I’ve manually inserted the correct tags for him.

If you are responding to me then I think they are reasonable points I agree with the second. I don’t know the answer to the first and certainly the European example sheds no light on what effect someone like Hawke might have done!! So I will accept that you might be right, but with the comparative material I have, Howard did a magnificent job, even if inadvertently.

In essence he resisted the urge (whether or not he personally was so urged) to disenfranchise her supporters, but instead gave them a hearing and a response. Probably the only mainstream Western government to do so, with the possible exception of the US (where some parts did and others did not).

Ironically some of the Western European governments were actually pursuing plenty of impeccably racist policies which had they dared admit them probably would have encouraged a great number of Le Pen/Haider/etc supporters.

So its all very well for someone like me to sit here and say that I find Hansons policies repellent (and I do), but hey, its not my job which is at risk. Rather than just dismissing Hanson supporters as racist, I think its important to acknowledge reasons why her views might be attractive to a certain group of people.

And equally valid to understand why trashing her is of benefit to a certain different group of people who don’t like the idea of anyone speaking up and forming a focal point for the dissatisfaction of the less educated classes. Politics is a dirty business, and that isn’t likely to change soon. Do we want to run a few side bets on whether Rudd will increase or decrease the immigration quotas now that recession has hit? It doesn’t get mentioned much but while Howard was throwing children overboard he was also supervising a relatively high rate of immigration.

I dont agree, Nick. The newspapers are in desperate financial straights and they know that publishing this type of trash will temporarily boost their sales.

True enough, when the papers are gone there will always be anon accounts on youtube and the Internet viral email trashing. Maybe we will be hiring Chinese experts to help us deal with such threats.

• Perhaps Howard’s handling of Hanson was masterful. I though it was just sympathetic (ie to her – Howard was the only Cabinet Minister in the Fraser Govt to object to Fraser’s generosity to boat people). And would race relations in Aust be worse if Hawke had been in power. He wouldn’t have tolerated her views and wouldn’t have given her the oxygen she got – Malcolm Fraser too. Both as PM were prepared to be persuaders rather than dividers – as opposed to Keating and Howard.
• I think we have reasonably civilised race relations with aborigines. We just have terrible living conditions for aborigines, which are largely the result of social breakdown in those communities.

I think GeoffR has accurately described Hanson’s followers, or a couple percent of them at least. I think Nick is closer to the mark on the rest of them, however, I am not sure about them being victims. To a larger extent, I would have thought they were mainly just people. People with different cultural contexts to some of us and people with different history to some of us, but not fundamentally victims of anything or one.

Hanson, or Howard’s handling of her, was an amazingly positive thing for Australia. Idealists might think otherwise but how many countries have had such civilised race relations (leaving to one side Aborigines for the moment, but the point is probably valid even with them)?

Consider Europe and the massive support there of the far right. Can you imagine Hanson getting 20% of the vote? GeoffR, do you think that 20% of Western Europe fits the description you offered?

I was reading The Undercover Economist (as recommended by SL) which has an analysis of why anti-immigration policies appeal to unskilled labourers in the US. Skilled workers welcome immigration and diversity because a new unskilled workforce doesn’t threaten their livelihood. By contrast, once the pool of unskilled labourers is increased, the wages of these workers goes down because they are no longer as scarce.

So it’s all very well for someone like me to sit here and say that I find Hanson’s policies repellent (and I do), but hey, it’s not my job which is at risk. Rather than just dismissing Hanson supporters as racist, I think it’s important to acknowledge reasons why her views might be attractive to a certain group of people. As Sparrow notes, a certain amount of the attraction is rank bigotry, and an unpleasant desire to kick those who are already down, but her views also tapped into fears about jobs.

Do you seriously think tabloids wouldn’t publish nudey pics featuring Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard?

Besides, Hanson was a fish n’ chip shop owner and hence part of the petty bourgeoisie rather than “poor white trash”, which corresponds more closely to the lumpen proletariat.

I know that that is how one can read it, and if he’s shoehorning it you’re right. But it enables him to see the obvious which is not something that others have commented on. She’s open for this treatment because she’s seen as poor white trash – like Sparrow says.

Sparrow, the author of the piece, is an unreformed Marxist who has tried to shoehorn this story into a predictable and simplistic class, race and gender narrative. How boring.

A strong and prosperous society is built upon a strong democracy. It tolerates the outrageous margins such as Pauline’s wacky policies. It’s inclusive and human. It would allow Peter Garrett a public voice. It would not jail Pauline Hanson.

Prosperity is not built upon ill-defined concepts such as technology and globalisation. These are mere levers; we can choose how we use them!