Foreign Policy
Summer 1999

Among the Barbarians: The Dividing of Australia
By Paul Sheehan
Reviewed by Ross Peake_*

 

“Just two weeks ago, I would not, could not, have broadcast this story,” a BBC reporter observed on the eve of the 1998 elections in the Australian State of Queensland. “It would have been laughed away as silly—the reportage of absurdity.”

Yet the absurd did happen. The far-right political party One Nation—founded in 1997 by former fish-and-chips restaurant owner Pauline Hanson—received 23 percent of the popular vote and picked up 11 seats in the new state parliament. With a party platform that was more rhetoric than policy, One Nation waged all-out war against multiculturalism, free trade, preferential welfare policies for Aborigines, and disease-ridden Asian immigrants who steal jobs from hard-working Australians.

Hanson’s success generated rumblings in the tectonic plates of the domestic political scene that were felt throughout the Pacific Rim. Asian trading partners warned the Australian government of serious consequences if Hanson’s movement gained further momentum. Perplexed commentators throughout the country wondered how this “fishwife” (to quote some newspapers) had scored such an electoral upset. In attempting to answer this question, Paul Sheehan, a writer with the Sydney Morning Herald, generated nearly as much controversy as Hanson herself. His book, Among the Barbarians, places the blame for the meteoric rise of Pauline Hanson not on extremists and jobless rednecks who flocked to the voting booths, but squarely on the shoulders of an Australian society that has become crippled by liberal guilt.

The “barbarians” in the book’s title are neither immigrants nor Aborigines, but the “taste-makers” who seek to impose their views within the paradigm of political correctness—the people Australian prime minister John Howard once dubbed self-appointed “cultural dietitians.” Sheehan argues that a clampdown on debate over multiculturalism—orchestrated by a “coalition” consisting of the Labor Party, the multicultural industry, and the selective news media—generated the buildup of social tensions that led to the spectacular success of One Nation. “So strong and so ruthlessly imposed were the protocols constraining discussion of racism, discrimination, affirmative action and immigration, it would be a foolish move to smash through and express, with undisguised resentment, the unpleasant fears felt in much of the electorate,” Sheehan writes. “Pauline Hanson made that move.”

Although Sheehan echoes some of Hanson’s themes and credits her with the courage to fuel the debate, he is not a disciple. (In fact, one minister in the federal government pointedly described Among the Barbarians as a handbook for “intelligent” conservatives.) Sheehan argues for an open debate on immigration policy, on a plane above Hanson’s simplistic and reactionary policies. He is infuriated by the disposition of the former federal Labor government toward multiculturalism, estimating that the government gave more than 1 billion Australian dollars to ethnic organizations during its 13 years in power. The payback came when the powerful and media-savvy ethnic bodies campaigned aggressively for Labor during successive elections. “The role of ethnic blocs as tools in Labor politics found its most naked expression in the large Greek community of Melbourne, which was allowed to set up fourteen ‘community language’ branches,” he claims. “These branches, in turn, formed the bedrock of the power of the Socialist Left of the Labor Party.”

Sheehan obviously revels in his role as bold slayer of political correctness, fearlessly going where no one, or at least no intellectual, has dared to tread. To demonstrate his credentials for swimming against the tide, and to cement his reputation as a victim-cum-hero, the opening chapter of Sheehan’s book quotes a radio commentator who characterized one of his previous articles, “The Multi-Cultural Myth,” as “dangerous garbage,” “badly researched bile,” and “the worst of gutter journalism.”

Although Among the Barbarians does not merit that level of abuse, it does have one serious flaw. It is a lively read when it takes aim at what Sheehan and Hanson believe are the sacred cows of Australian society, but it is short on conclusions. Sheehan has filled the book with a litany of facts, figures, and lengthy quotations to underpin his assertions, but the reader finishes unsure of where it is all supposed to be going.

Nevertheless, the book became an instant success, catapulting to the top of the bestseller lists and remaining there for weeks. The publishers report that sales are now approaching 100,000, marking it as one of the biggest-selling political books in the country’s history.

But whereas pundits can get away with scathing rhetoric that offers no practical solutions, the same cannot always be said for politicians. Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party suffered devastating losses in last October’s national elections, failing to win even one seat in the House of Representatives.