Pauline Hanson - Ch 9

One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson hired by Channel 9’s Today show for regular fortnightly appearances, has been dropped by Channel 9 after she went on an offensive against the Melbourne residents trapped inside nine housing commission towers.

Showing brazen disrespect in her typical ill-informed rhetoric, she labelled the tower residents “drug addicts” who should have learnt English before coming to Australia.

In a cosmetic, band-aid response, Channel 9 announced that Senator Hanson would no longer be doing her regular Today appearances, beacuse ‘her latest comments went too far’.

“The Today show has advised Pauline Hanson that she will no longer be appearing on our programme as a regular contributor,” Nine’s Director of News and Current Affairs Darren Wick said in a statement.

The Today show co-host Ally Langdon put it to the Senator that some of the tower residents hadn’t had a proper meal since Saturday, when Pauline Hanson ‘hell’broke loose:

“Ah come on Ally, we’ve seen food being delivered there,” she replied. “The fact is a lot of them are drug addicts as well, they are getting their medication, they are alcoholics so they’re being looked after in that way.

“They are actually getting paid extra money. Why are they getting paid extra money? For what? They are not leaving the premises.”

Senator Hanson suggested  residents’ inability to speak English had led to the towers being shut down.

“A lot of these people are from non-English speaking back grounds, probably English is their second language who haven’t adhered to the rules of social distancing. They all used a lot of the same laundry,” Ms Hanson added.

 

“So the fact is you’ve got to look at why they are in that situation. Why is it they are in that situation? Why has the Government gone to this high-rise building and shut it down? Possibly because a lot of these people weren’t doing the right thing.

“… There has to be a reason why they have targeted this set of blocks, apartment blocks. Ask that question.”

Ms Hanson even suggested (being) refugees from war-torn countries should be able to withstand being locked up.

“You know, these people, I saw them taking a truck load of food to them, all the rest of it, if they are from war torn countries, which some of these people are, they know what it is like to be in tough conditions,” she said.

And when it was put to her that authorities could have done better in reaching out to the tower residents in their native language, Ms Hanson responded:

“Why should we? Why should we put everything out in someone else’s language when you come to Australia”.

“We should not be putting out literature in their own language. Learn to speak English when you come here to this country. That’s a big problem that we have in Australia.”

Senator Hanson argued the Australian public has already been through a lockdown and this was no different. And if the residents in these high rise buildings are stuck, tough luck, she suggests.

 “… the Government has taken food to them, they get paid extra money, they are getting methadone, they are given the drugs, they are looking after their addictions, what is your problem?

The problem is many residents say they went without food for more than 24 hours. That fact alone is unacceptable.

Could things have been done better? The answer is yes.

If anyone says it is not questionable, they have got rocks in their heads.

Ms Hanson has been having a lot of space in Australian debates and getting away with saying whatever she likes. It is simply because the ethnic media has not been vocal enough to bring facts to counter the Hanson narrative. Criticize migrants or any Australia for doing things un-Australian but with facts, respecting what and who we already have as Australian in Australia. Trading personal prejudices as social commentary, that too as nationalist and nation-building has to be stopped.

It is high time that migrant communities rise up and shut her up when she is in the wrong. All migrants are not ‘English–ignorant’ and many can do a lot better job of it than Senator Hanson or perhaps many others occupying spaces in Canberra. But Ms Hanson speaks, the mainstream media in their ages-old typical style, corroborate her thesis by doing a job which, at most times is patronising of migrant Australians. They are also Australians working their guts out to make their contribution to Australia’s nation building but are labelled ‘migrants’ and as a consequence are seen as ‘others’. It has to STOP, and NOW.

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