A good rule of thumb in Australian politics (and perhaps life in general) is that if you stand on the side of Pauline Hanson, you stand on the wrong side of history.
Last week, knee-deep in a PR blitz around attempts to reform the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), NDIS Minister Bill Shorten stood beside the One Nation leader to hammer home the importance of the new laws that Shorten is trying to implement.
“Changes [are] needed to be done and it [needs] to be cleaned up,” Hanson said. “And that’s why I’m here talking today and I’m supporting Mr Shorten on this legislation that’s been put forward.”
That legislation, forecast to cut $14.4 billion in growth over the next five years to avoid the NDIS becoming a future blow-out burden for successive governments, has been delayed by the upper house’s community affairs committee — a delay Shorten claims will cost taxpayers at least $1 billion.
His attempt to rule out payment for sex toys and tarot readings aside, the optics of Shorten making cute with Hanson over the NDIS are stomach-curdling, especially when viewed from the perspective of a disabled person or disability support worker.
Hanson’s view has always seemed to be that those she deems to be a burden on society have no real place in it. By shaking hands with her, Shorten has tacitly endorsed that view.
In 2017, during a debate on the federal government’s school funding legislation, Hanson got in strife for suggesting that children with disabilities were a strain on teachers and schools, and should be segregated accordingly.
“These kids have a right to an education, by all means, but, if there are a number of them, these children should go into a special classroom and be looked after and given that special attention.”
“Most of the time the teacher spends so much time on them they forget about the child who is straining at the bit and wants to go ahead in leaps and bounds in their education. That child is held back by those others, because the teachers spend time with them.”
Hanson has been framing the disabled as burdensome dependents as far back as 1998, when One Nation released its “aged care and the disabled” policy ahead of the federal election.
There, she made it clear that disabled people being placed in community-based housing (as opposed to institutionalised care) was a threat to the community at large: “Much of the community concern at present stems from fear that residential areas will suffer from inappropriate placement of intellectually disabled people with anti-social behaviour.”
The disabled community isn’t given a platform to defend itself, let alone fight back against a senator.
Standing besides Hanson is a denial of the intersectionality of disabled communities as well as the struggle for disabled rights — disability being something that touches people of all races, sexualities and genders. By using Hanson as a prop, Shorten is reducing the idea of who gets to be an acceptable disabled person down to someone who is white, straight, male and cis.
The attention Paulie Hanson continues to receive speaks volumes about the ineptitude of our political media and the successive generations of would-be centrists who’ve wasted time and energy appeasing her.
The Hanson-Shorten photoshoot was brushed aside and barely remarked upon in the media, which, to be fair, tends to act that way in most matters pertaining to the disabled community. But it should stand out as a brief moment of repulsiveness in a government that seems to be weaving a large tapestry of them.
