At lunchtime on Thursday, my daughter left school, caught a bus and train into Melbourne’s CBD with her friends, and screamed her lungs out about Pauline Hanson.
I gave her permission. I could hardly say no, considering I did the same thing 28 years ago.
In 1998, I was in year 11 at Bunbury senior high school in Western Australia. Hanson was visiting our town, so I wagged school with my friends Steve, Kate and Andrea and joined a small protest outside the venue where she was speaking.
We had little first-hand experience of cultural diversity but we were outraged by her mean-spiritedness. Hanson had recently made a statement about being “the mother of the nation” (or something like that) so we chanted: “You are not our mother!” Even as white kids in a relatively monocultural regional town, we did not want to be represented by her.
A photo of us made the local newspaper. The owners of the ice-cream shop where Steve and I worked were unimpressed to see two of their junior staff gain notoriety.
The problem is that Hanson seems to thrive on attention, so perhaps a better strategy is to ignore her. Could my friends and I have unwittingly contributed to her rise?
This afternoon, my teen’s school principal sent an email to parents reminding us that “schools play an important role in helping students understand constructive ways of sharing their views and having a voice on issues they feel strongly about”. I assume this was a response to a large number of teens attending the protest.
The school does a wonderful job.
But how exactly are young people supposed to raise their voice beyond school? They can’t share their opinions at the ballot box and, at 15, my daughter is banned from social media so can’t even express herself online.
In the 1990s, social media was a distant prospect. Triple J had only recently expanded to regional WA and I had little concept of youth subcultures let alone youth politics.
Back then, we didn’t have memes but we used to mimic her famous question “please explain” and took delight in the satirist Pauline Pantsdown. I am shocked her career has had longevity.
Protesting against Hanson was the first of many anti-racism protests I have participated in. Once I became a mother, I took my daughter along with me and we participated in Black Lives Matter and various Indigenous rights rallies.
My daughter is now old enough to attend without me. As she has grown-up in a multicultural suburb, racism is a tangible issue that directly impacts her friends, neighbours and family.
I just hope the teens had a safe experience and that my future grandkids don’t have to protest against Pauline Hanson too.
• Philippa Chandler is a freelance journalist and academic who lives in Melbourne
