By Shane Bentley
NEWCASTLE — The November 21 Newcastle by-election was more memorable than most.
Things started out quietly enough while I was handing out in Cooks Hill for the Democratic Socialist candidate, Geoff Payne. Then the politicians descended on the polling booth.
Allan Morris, the sitting Labor MP, arrived first, with the press close behind. He did the usual politician PR, but he looked decidedly worried about the impact that One Nation might have on his precious career in parliament.
Then came Kate Taylor, the One Nation candidate, with David Oldfield playing minder. As if on queue, Taylor and Morris started arguing about $4000 that One Nation allegedly owes the Civic Theatre. A minute or two was enough for most onlookers to grow tired of the spectacle.
Fed up with the charade, this socialist tried to inject some politics into their argument.
"Morris shouldn't be arguing about $4000; there's more important issues to discuss", I said to Taylor. She half smiled at me, thinking she had a co-thinker.
"Like the racist policies of One Nation", I continued. Taylor's smile quickly turned into its opposite. She threw down the challenge One Nation always puts to journalists: "Name one policy of One Nation that is racist".
"What about your call for the abolition of ATSIC? You want to remove the few benefits that Aboriginal people receive from the government", I explained. "Aboriginal people have faced 200 years of oppression ..."
"And 40,000 years of killing and eating each other", David Oldfield interjected from the sidelines.
The media got what they wanted. One Nation's "mastermind" had blurted out the now infamous "cannibal insult" for all to hear. They had their headline for the Sunday papers.
But the argument went on. Queried about what One Nation would do to stop BHP closing the Newcastle steelworks, Oldfield explained that One Nation would subsidise BHP and put steel import tariffs in place. It didn't matter that successive Liberal and Labor governments have been doing exactly that.
Of course Oldfield laughed when the demand of nationalising BHP was mentioned. It seems that you can be against privatisation when you don't want "Australian wealth" to fall into "foreign hands", but expropriating the wealth of an Australian multinational is out of the question.
One of Oldfield's favourite chestnuts came up — Cuba. After declaiming about people leaving Cuba in droves and political dissenters being shot, he expressed his desire to round up the Resistance group and send them all to Cuba.
Perhaps sending political opponents into exile is the secret One Nation plan for dealing with dissent? (If One Nation will pay for Resistance members to go to Cuba — please ring (02) 9690 1230, David.)
"You'll never make anything of yourself", was Oldfield's next retort. It seems that his idea of making it is to be a business owner or a politician.
Doesn't One Nation claim to represent the "battlers"? This last comment, along with the shiny silver sports car that Taylor and Oldfield travelled in, tend to demonstrate otherwise.
Eventually Oldfield and Co. moved on to another polling booth, and I got on with the job at hand. I thought that my election day efforts would be concentrated on raising socialist ideas to Newcastle voters. If my efforts helped expose the racist nature of One Nation, then all the better.