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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1041 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: No, there was not. There was no Liberal candidate. She was disendorsed by the Liberal Party. The only major party candidate at that election was the Labor candidate. I think it was Mr Scott. So, Mr Speaker, she went to that election and she undoubtedly drew on the votes of people who would otherwise have voted for an official Liberal candidate, if one were available. Undoubtedly, that is true. But you need to acknowledge at the same time that she could not have won the seat of Oxley unless substantial numbers of solid working-class Labor voters also supported her. She could not have won that seat, except in those circumstances.

Mr Speaker, I do not make that point to attack Labor Party voters - not at all. I make the point to say that you cannot write off Pauline Hanson's support just by saying that she draws on the pastoralists, the gun owners, the people who hate Asians and the people who hate blacks - that kind of phenomenon. You cannot write her off on that basis. Many people have picked up and apparently expressed support for her point of view, including people in traditional Labor Party supporting parts of this country. We have to challenge that mind-set, not just challenge Pauline Hanson. It is simply not enough to say, "Pauline Hanson is wrong. Ostracise Pauline Hanson". That is not the full answer to this problem. I think, Mr Speaker, it is to challenge Pauline Hanson's philosophy and the things behind it, and to argue why it is good for us to have immigration from a range of countries, including countries of Asia, and why it is good for us to have positive discrimination in favour of Aboriginal people because of the many decades of discrimination against them. That is the kind of thing we have to do in this debate.

Mr Speaker, it is to the credit of my party that the first time Pauline Hanson expressed views that were anathema to the tolerant society which we live in today she got the boot. She was chucked out of the Liberal Party on virtually the same day she expressed those points of view. That is a matter of credit to my party. I have to note that there were other people expressing views hostile to that kind of society - people like Graeme Campbell - who were tolerated for over a decade in the Labor Party. So, let us not pretend in this debate that there are people over there who are whiter than white, who hate those views of intolerance and those expressions of racism, who do not believe in these sorts of things - - -

Mr Whitecross: Tell us about Bob Katter.

MR HUMPHRIES: He is not in my party, Mr Speaker. I do not take any credit for Bob Katter.

Mr Whitecross: He votes for your Prime Minister.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR HUMPHRIES: If there are racists in the Liberal Party, they will be expelled, Mr Speaker, and that is the expression that was clearly at work in Pauline Hanson's expulsion from the Liberal Party.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

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