Pauline Hanson: equal doses of political ambition and ignorance. Photo: Tertius Pickard
Sometimes it takes an 11-year-old to nail it. "Why are the politicians saying bad things about the other side," my daughter asked yesterday, "and not saying what they would do?"
It's because fear works. Fear that Medicare might be sold, despite assurances it won't be. Fear that asylum seekers are holding secret parties, gearing up for a Labor victory. Fear that a slip of the tongue will turn an avalanche of voters.
The result is a vanilla election, akin to watching drying paint and where the focus is on a real-fake-real tradie from Sydney, and the scandalous revelation that Labor leader Bill Shorten might have once visited a strip club. Thank goodness he didn't answer the question about sex up against a washing machine!
Fear and hate, not vision or even substance, are now the core motivators of our political campaigns. And they are both such loathsome time wasters.
It was a point made by Rosie Batty, last year's Australian of the Year, at yesterday's Brisbane business chicks' breakfast.
Rosie Batty, after having her son stolen from her through the violent act of her ex-partner, has nothing to fear any more; a point she made herself.
And she wasn't going to waste a single inhalation of oxygen on hate. Not even on Eddie McGuire, the Melbourne schoolboy who thought it was fun to talk about drowning a female journalist.
Batty's response to McGuire? He's done a bunch of good stuff too, she told an audience packed to the rafters, but a bit like Tony Abbott he tended to wear his mouth as a sock.
And while we needed "to stop accepting what is not acceptable", Batty made the valid point that the community, which has vocally derided McGuire, had matured in its view of how women should be treated.
Of course there's room to improve. Two women a week were still being killed. Family violence was still the core work for our police officers, responsible for 40 per cent of all call-outs, and one in four of our children was now affected by family violence. The court system was stuck in the past, too, still believing it was appropriate to hand a child over to someone who had showed the propensity to be violent.
But it is Batty's respectful activism, without preaching fear or hate, that wraps her message up so successfully. It's a raw power that not only Eddie McGuire should listen to – but our politicians as well.
Just take Pauline Hanson who – despite losing her lower house seat in 1998 and failing in at least eight campaigns since – conceivably will be elected to the Senate on July 2.
"We have to take a strong stance against Muslims," she said this week. And that wasn't where the fear and hate stopped. We had to say "no" to more Muslims in Australia to protect our security, our safety and our people.
"We have laws here that we don't bring in pit bull terriers because they're a danger to our society ... so if we know this is the case with terrorists radicalised by Islam and what it teaches, why does our government ignore that fact?"
As Hanson was spreading fear, members of the Queensland Intercultural Society (QIS) were hosting Iftar dinners in their homes – a scheme started in 2007 where a Muslim family welcomes another family into their dining room at the end of the day's fast during Ramadan.
Around the table at a home in Calamvale, where I dined, the talk was of tolerance, and how most Australians show disdain for the hatred preached by a few. It seemed a world away from Pauline Hanson and her anti-Muslim comments.
Rosie Batty and Pauline Hanson. Two women this week advocating for change in our country, on Queensland soil. One driven by a murderous ex-partner and the loss of her only child. The other by equal doses of political ambition and ignorance. Worlds apart.
And which one do you get to vote for?
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