The Real Challenge of Pauline Hanson
by Veronica Brady
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 61
Winter 1998

Part 4

If this is so, the real key to our problems may lie with each of us personally. Angry attacks on One Nation will do little good; violence breeds violence. The first step is surely to some common ground so that we listen to what Hanson's supporters are really saying (which is not necessarily what they seem on the surface to be saying). They may also begin to listen to us. For this to happen, we must conduct ourselves more modestly and resist the temptation to be right, the self-righteousness, dogmatism and implicit sense of superiority which has made thinking people so unpopular. Repudiation of One Nation must not make us remote or unsympathetic. It is important to recognise, even (to an extent) to share the pain which lies under the anger, bigotry and plain stupidity of many of their policies. We must not shirk the demands made on us if we are to help restore a sense of community, of the politics, if you like, of the common good. Nor must we shirk the challenges of ambiguity. There are no easy answers, we must learn to seek answers to our problems with patience and humility.

What I am suggesting, then, is that the issue is ultimately a spiritual one. The heart of the crisis we face is the loss of authority, the sense of some ultimate reality which commands obedience. This does not necessarily presuppose a return to religion. Indeed some forms of religiosity are part of the problem; the God their devotees proclaim often seems a projection of their own emotional needs for power, security or whatever. What it does imply, however, is acknowledgment of "realities at present unseen", a power beyond the self who calls us beyond the self, to a 'juster' justice than we know, a love prepared to give itself to as well as receive from the other and a trust in a reverence for life; a confidence that, as Julian of Norwich said, in the long run, "All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well".

This understanding accepts the limits of the self, knows that it needs others to realise who we truly are. This realisation by definition involves compassion. In our situation, for example, being a non-aboriginal Australian means acknowledging that our success has been achieved at the expense of its first peoples and that we therefore have a responsibility to them, a responsibility which leads to an understanding of and respect for our differences and a readiness to work together.

This sounds impossibly idealistic and it is not meant to be a substitute for the hard work of reconstructing a politics which is both realistic, able to come to terms with our actual economic and social situation, and concerned for the dignity and hope of ordinary people. But it is clear that we also need a circuit-breaker, some kind of 'revaluation of value', as indeed One Nation's rejection of conventional politics and economics suggests also. It would be disastrous, however, if this circuit-breaker were to be hate, violence and rejection of reason. That is to continue to operate within the parameter of the present system. We need an interruption of a different kind, a different set of values and a redefinition of what we see as 'reality'.

It is difficult to be more specific than this because the task lies ahead of us. But it is an urgent task and the stakes are high. But we must be confident since, in the long run, power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, nor does it depend upon economics; it lies in the human imagination, in the values we believe in and project on the world. Perhaps the demons we face can only be driven out by prayer and fasting. To put it another way, what we need if we are to respond to One Nation's challenge is, in the words, once again, of Adorno, "a gaze averted from the beaten track, a hatred of brutality, a search for fresh concepts not yet encompassed by the general pattern, is the last hope for thought". (And, I would add, for civil society.) We must still be able to talk to one another.

To: Perpectives Issue 61

Veronica Brady Veronica Brady is a Loreto nun and author of the recent South of My Days: a biography of Judith Wright.