By Chris Johnston
Narre Warren North – a small pocket of suburbia within the sprawl of Melbourne's vast and fast-growing south east – is Trump-land, and proudly so. There is widespread distrust of and disaffection with establishment policy-makers who most around here consider politically correct fools.
Here is Neil Bull, 46. He lives in 'Narre North' with his family, two kids. He works in insurance, is smart and well-read but is sick of what he calls the "fringe stuff – we don't want a super-left greenie agenda that is there to push things like gay marriage etcetera".
Neil Bull lives in the Casey area, close to where a mosque was proposed.Credit: Joe Armao
That's not because he is opposed to homosexuality or gay people getting married necessarily. It's because he considers it – and other forms of "social engineering" – a distraction from the things that really need to be done. These being rising crime, roads, the economy and jobs, and domestic violence. "People care more about the fact that their neighbour is beating up his wife."
On the campaign trail in the United States trying to beat Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton rashly called his supporters the "deplorables", referring to those she considered sexist and racist the uneducated, redneck great unwashed. That exists in Narre North as it does everywhere; the reality is that this uprising is subtle and steady.
Rise Up Australia deputy and Casey councillor Rosalie Crestani.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Mr Bull lives very close to where the Saarban Islamic Trust wanted to build a big mosque with a 25-metre minaret on vacant semi-rural land on the Belgrave-Hallam Road, between Dandenong and the Dandenong Hills. The plan was scuttled by the Casey Council who said it didn't meet planning requirements. Mayor Sam Aziz, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian, vowed to fight any appeal yet the Islamic Trust wants to try again in another spot with a smaller building.
This week the mayor made a post on his Facebook in support of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's view that Lebanese Muslims should never have been let into Australia because it led to terrorism: "One day Shorten and the chorus of lefties labelling those who speak the truth 'racists and bigots' will realise that the real world is moving in the opposite direction," the mayor wrote.
Neil Bull speaks in a measured, considered way. He opposed the mosque. He stood for Family First in this year's federal election. "I'm not super anti-Muslim; it was more of a local issue for me, I want to preserve the area and the way it looks."
Links were made to Islamophobia and racism but he says "most of us around here know the media lives by extremes. That's not how the population lives. Most media are out of touch."
Neil Bull: "I want to preserve the area and the way it looks." Credit: Joe Armao, Fairfax Media.
He also talks about the Country Fire Authority; this is CFA territory, Bull's neighbourhood is in CFA district eight, there are big CFA sheds everywhere. It is out of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) zone, and like many Bull hates the state government's very union-centric role in giving the United Firefighter's Union more power over the CFA's volunteer workforce. "I'm jack of (Premier) Daniel Andrews and his arrogance."
In his Four Oaks ward is the Endeavour Hills police station where in 2014 Numan Haider stabbed two counter terrorism officers and was shot dead. He was from Narre Warren and went to a fundamentalist mosque; he was carrying two knives and an Islamic State flag.
Narre Warren North is Trump-land, and proudly so. Credit: Joe Armao
Down the road into Narre Warren North, salesman Paul Ahern, 45, is also married with two kids but is of the firm view that mosques foster terrorism and Islam does not fit the Australian way of life. "Live by Australian rules," he says. "I've got one wife, we all know they've got multiple. Mosques are terrorist-training facilities, we all know that's what goes on."
I ask Paul if he could consider the idea that most Australian mosques are just places of worship. "The proven statistics suggest otherwise," he says.
Narre Warren North shopping mall.Credit: Joe Armao
This week One Nation and Derryn Hinch's Justice Party signalled assaults on the Victorian parliament for 2018's state election, aiming to capitalise on disillusionment with mainstream politics. It is at the very least a ripple from the year's defining moments – Trump in the United States and Brexit in Britain, in which the silent majorities expressed their disillusionments and fears.
On behalf of Hinch, election 'preference whisperer' Glenn Druery said Casey and the south-east was potentially fertile ground for "Trump-style" thinking – "they are a people who may feel disenchanted." Hinch has flagged a reasonable chance of picking up one or two seats from around the state in the Victorian upper house. Druery said One Nation had no chance of winning a lower house seat.
What of Rise Up Australia? The far-right political party fielded two senate candidates at the last federal election, opposing 'Islamification'. It is based in Hallam right next to Narre Warren North, the headquarters for 100 branches nationally. Their deputy leader is Rosalie Crestani who represents the ward of Four Oaks in Casey Council, covering Narre Warren North, Endeavour Hills, Lysterfield South and Harkaway.
She is at the centre of things, and she calls it a "revolt, a revolutionary cycle". Crestani is a member of party leader Danny Nalliah's evangelical Christian church, Catch The Fire Ministries and has run for the senate twice. Neil Bull and Paul Ahern both voted for her in the council elections – "Rosalie is just a normal person who puts things in perspective," says Bull.
Numan Haider's "terrorist" attack on her ward's police station two years ago galvanised her community, she says, even local Muslims who were opposed to sharia law and frightened of a dangerous form of Islam.
School systems and particularly the Safe Schools Coalition of Australia, which Victoria generously funds and with an emphasis on bullying and gender issues, appals her. But she is only reflecting the views of her constituency there; "schools are morphing into something people don't recognise anymore."
Brexit, Trump and Pauline Hanson, she says. The three big factors in where she sees herself and the people she represents. Not that they go around talking about politics and policy all the time, it's just a mindset, she says, and it is swinging.
"I've been called the Pauline Hanson of Casey and I've been poorly treated just like her; but look at her, she is powerful. People are starting to understand now. We are seeing a Western world revolt against the establishment."