Dan Ilic Went Hichhiking In Queensland To Find Out Why Pauline Hanson’s So Popular
"I'm not racist, but..."
It’s still too early to tell just what the exact makeup of the new Senate will be, but it seems likely Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has picked up as many as three Upper House seats. Hanson herself has been elected comfortably in Queensland, while One Nation candidates in NSW and WA are pretty likely to get up as well.
Politicians, academics and commentators have pointed to rural Queensland as the driving force behind Hanson’s comeback, where dissatisfaction with mainstream politics, a tanking economy, zero job prospects for rural workers and concerns about immigration saw One Nation’s vote go as high as 21 percent. Rural Queensland and the people who live there don’t rate much of a mention in most political coverage, not least because a huge proportion of Australian journalists live in the innermost suburbs of Australia’s major east coast cities.
In the lead-up to Saturday’s vote, ABC reporter and comedian Dan Ilic hitchhiked from Hobart to Cape York with a microphone and a video camera to record #Twitchike, a webseries designed to get the thoughts of people in the country whose political views don’t get much airtime.
The final episode, which went up on Friday, saw Ilic catch a ride with some rural Queensland punters, plenty of whom were keen to vote for Hanson. Ilic even ran into One Nation’s candidate for the seat of Hinkler, Damian Huxham, who answered some of Ilic’s questions about why he was standing for a party like One Nation and what his opinions were on issues like immigration and Islam.
While just about every answer begins with the phrase “I’m not racist, but…”, plenty of genuine grievances about the pathetic state of current politics, the disconnect between major cities and the regions and the harsh impacts of globalisation come to the surface too.
“Right across the board, from Hobart to the Whitsundays, Notamajorcitysiders are bored and fucked-right-off with the major parties,” Ilic wrote on Medium. “With every leadership change, people appear to notice a decisive downturn in their economic fortunes. Uncertainty is rife.”
While he encountered plenty of disillusionment and apathy among people, Ilic found that the people most engaged and excited about the democratic process were new Australians. “Every driver who had become a citizen in the last decade was engaged in the issues, had read up on policy, had put thought into their vote, and was genuinely excited to participate in our electoral process.”
You can watch #Twitchikes in full here.