IN 1973 Al Grassby, immigration minister in the Whitlam government, announced the end of the white Australia policy. “It is dead,” he said. “Give me a shovel and I will bury it.” But the policy’s passing does not mean that it has been forgotten. Successive immigration controversies since have prompted claims that White Australia still holds a residual influence. ~ Gwenda Tavan, ‘Race lesson for leaders in policy’s slow demise’, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 4, 2005. See also : The Long, Slow Death of White Australia, Gwenda Tavan, Scribe Publications, 2005.

On the one hand, the ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ has proclaimed that it has succeeded in obtaining 100 members in NSW, thus allowing the party to register for participation as a party in local council elections in that state. On the other hand, the ‘Australia First Party’ appears to be on the brink of Federal registration; a process requiring it to have at least 500 members. After having initially stated that it had accrued 525 members in July 2009, and declaring that the requisite paperwork had been submitted in October 2009, the Party now claims that processing won’t take place until January, 2010.

With the collapse of ‘Australians Against Further Immigration’, and the near-total collapse of the ‘One Nation Party’, AF brings together a number of the remnants of these and earlier incarnations of the organised far right — of the late 1970s and early 1980s (‘National Resistance’ and ‘Australian National Alliance’) and the mid-1980s through to the early-1990s (‘National Action’ and ‘Confederate Action Party’).

Over to AF:

Australia First Registration Applicants Uphold The Ideals Of Australianism

Australia First Party has applied for registration as a party with the Australian Electoral Commission. The application was made on October 2 and will take some months to be processed.

Our party aims to consolidate those Australians who are prepared – right now – to stand up in the cause of Australian Identity, Independence and Freedom.

Some eleven members were obliged by law to co-sign the party registration application.

We are pleased to provide political biography on these members precisely because our party certainly aims to consolidate into one party those activists and shapers from earlier movements of nationalist resistance to the globalisation of our country. Our party has drawn together those who wish to pursue the struggle in an activist way. We have united people with long experience and we want other activists still involved elsewhere to appreciate that fact. In simple truth, Australia First Party represents a veritable tradition in Australian political life stretching back over decades. We aim to become the common vehicle that will achieve success.

1. Tony Pettitt

Tony will serve as Registered Officer. He entered nationalist politics in the late 1980s as an independent candidate and then worked through Australians Against Further Immigration and One Nation when he was a candidate several times and worked in an organizational capacity. He joined the new Australia First in 2008.

As noted, Pettitt is a veteran of the far right. The ‘new’ AF is the AF that developed after the split of mid-2007, when the Party went three ways: a rump party under the leadership of petunia-loving Shepparton resident Diane Teasdale; a new grouping titled the ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ under the nominal leadership of Andrew Phillips (but having as its principal spokesperson the Sydney-based Darrin Hodges); and the ‘new’ AF under Saleam’s leadership.

Pettitt drives a truck, and is a very talented performer for AF, having stood for the party in both Blacktown and Hawkesbury in September 2008. In Blacktown, the terrible trio of Tony Pettitt, Terry Cooksley (below) and George Atkinson managed to assemble 1,229 votes between them, or 5% of the total.

…Then the Third World migrants arrived and “things turned to shit”.

There is irony that is lost on or unknown to these two men. The building we are sitting in was paid for with the remnants of George Saleam’s estate. Jim Saleam has been able to spend his entire adult life pursuing his racist agenda principally because his grandfather slipped through the White Australia net to become a successful and valued Australian…

2. Jim Saleam

Jim participated in the rebirth of the new Australian [n]ationalism, working through National Resistance and Australian National Alliance (1977-80) and was a co-founder of National Action which he led until 1991. He has written extensively on Australian identity. He joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 2001 and the new Australia First in 2007. He will serve as National Secretary.

There’s a few things missing from Saleam’s bio: 1) he was once a member of the Australian Nazi Party; 2) he’s a convicted criminal. In fact, Saleam’s leadership role in NA was truncated by his imprisonment for his role in a shotgun assault upon the home of Eddie Funde in 1989; he was supplanted by Michael (de) Brander of Adelaide.

Saleam was recently profiled by Greg Bearup in the Good Weekend (September 26/27), revealing Herr Doktor to be a little rich kid of Lebanese descent who’s all grown up now but who, sadly, still retains some very peculiar ideas about race and nation, and phantasies of white racial supremacy.

Altogether, a rather unpleasant fellow, but points for trying.

3. Nick Maine

As an ‘old warrior’ in the patriotic struggle, Nick is 87 years and served in the Australian Army in New Guinea. He both founded, and was a member of, several organisations, which arose after the betrayal of the White Australia Policy in 1966, to warn Australians of the dangers of liberal immigration. He joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 1996 and the new Australia First in 2007.

An elderly bigot old warrior from Queensland, Maine has been pouring out his fears for years. He doesn’t seem to like The Jew very much, possibly because he reckons they’re the dark force “behind Communism” (“Globalism = Zionism = Communism”). This also presumably explains why he wants to rid Australia of Bad Jews (‘Zionists’) and Muslims.

As well as being well-educated, Maine is also well-travelled: “I have been to Auschwitz and although my memory might not be perfect after 25 years I do not remember any blue walls in the alleged gas chambers, in fact I believe they were white – now sue me!”

Er…

4. Brendan Gidley

Brendan entered the nationalist struggle in 1984 as a member of National Action until 1991 and was involved thereafter in Australians Against Further Immigration and One Nation as an organizer[.] He has co-operated [with] some nationalist websites and publishing services. He joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 2002 and the new party in 2007.

ZOG says: “Another Victorian with a radical past who has hitched his star to Pauline’s wagon is Brendan Gidley, a One Nation branch committee member in the Melbourne suburb of Ringwood. Gidley stood for a Victorian Senate seat in 1993 for the Republican Party of Australia. He is also the founder of the tiny National Republican Movement, an anti-immigrant group that was active in the early 1990s, and which modelled itself on National Action. The NRM issued posters using artwork from the US-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. One of its stickers read: “Mass Third World immigration: Enriching our culture by TB, syphilis, AIDS, hepatitis, rabies, leprosy.” The NRM is still active, and is listed on a new far-right website as a supplier of “nationalist literature” written by former National Action and National Socialist (Nazi) Party leader Jim Saleam. The address given is Gidley’s PO Box in the Melbourne suburb of Kew.” (David Greason and Michael Kapel, AIJAC Notebook, June 16–July 7, 1998).

5. Neil Baird

Neil entered the nationalist struggle in 1992 as a member of Australians Against Further Immigration. He joined One Nation in 1997 and served the party as a candidate and in several administrative functions. He is a regular speaker [at] nationalist forums and joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 2005 and the new party in 2007.

Baird contested the Federal seat of Barton for ON in 1998 and again in 2004. For his efforts, he got 5,162 votes (6.8%) in 1998 and 1,284 votes (1.7%) in 2004. Baird also edits (or edited) a crank newsletter called ‘The News Report’, which featured ruminations on all the stuff you might expect a cranky right-wing zine to contain.

6. Alex Norwick

Alex participated in the rebirth of the new Australian nationalism, working through National Resistance and Australian National Alliance (1977-80) and was a co-founder of National Action; he also worked in the 1980s with other patriotic groups. In the 1990s he worked with Australians Against Further Immigration and One Nation. He has written on Australian labour history. He joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 2002 and the new Australia First in 2007.

7. Perry Jewell

Perry migrated to Australia from South Africa in 1972 and in 1990 co-founded Australia’s first mass nationalist-minded party – [the] Confederate Action Party. He worked subsequently through other groups in Queensland and founded in 2007 a movement to combat drug addiction in Australia. As a man of considerable political and other talent, he joined the new Australia First in 2009.

A far-right activist, founder of the now-defunct Queensland-based precursor to One Notion, the Confederate Action Party, and two-times Queensland Senate candidate (in 1993 and 1996), Jewell’s main claim to fame is having kidnapped his daughter a number of years ago in a bid to stop her using heroin (apparently). Jewell also contested the seat of Toowoomba North in the 2009 Queensland state election. He scored 494 votes (1.7%); which fact suggests that the people of Toowoomba North are not anywhere as patriotic as Perry.

8. Rob Fraser

Rob entered the nationalist arena in 1988, being an editor of the magazine, Bunyip Bulletin. He later participated in Australians Against Further Immigration. He joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 2004 and the new Australia First in 2007.

Fraser’s Bulletin was replaced by a far-right zine called The National Reporter. The Bulletin itself has been described as racist and anti-Semitic, and apparently included cartoons by some bloke called Dennis Nix of the US-based National Socialist White People’s Party (a party parodied in the Blues Brothers). Doug Jensen published an article in the July 1989 edition (the zine ran from 1988–1989) in which he described the conservation movement as ‘The Enemy Within’:

Conservation which insists on the confiscation of privately owned lands into national parks is synonymous with communism. And governments – socialist and so-called non-socialist alike – are funding this idiotic nonsense with hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money; fashioning laws to use national parks, buffer zones, planning restrictions, conservation, etc., as a big stick to belt the Australian people into submission and subvert our nation to the goal of democratic socialism, and, ultimately, to the international dictatorship of communism.

And who’s behind international communism eh? Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more say no more.

9. Nathan Clarke

Nathan is a younger nationalist activist who entered the movement in 2005. He joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 2005 and the new Australia First in 2007. He was a lead Council candidate for the new Australia First in Newcastle in 2008.

Clarke — along with Ian McBryde and Jim Smith — gained 328 votes at the election, or 2% of the total. Which means it’s just as well Clarke (who posts as ‘nafe’ on the Stormfront website) has a career in real estate to fall back on. (Not that he’d want to sell any property to The Jew of course).

10. Terry Cooksley

Terry joined Australian National Alliance (1979-80) and was a co-founder of National Action with which he remained until 1991. He was candidate in the 1990s for Australians Against Further Immigration and One Nation. He joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 2002 and the new Australia First in 2007.

Cooksley ran with Pettitt in local council elections in 2008. Interviewed by Greg Bearup, Cooksley, a “retired typewriter technician”, expressed a deep appreciation of Australian history, society, and political economy: Cooksley tells me he arrived in Australia as a £10 Pom and that it was then a paradise. “I could walk down the street, read all the signs and you never had to lock your car or your house”. Then the Third World migrants arrived and “things turned to shit”.

Hopefully, Australia First can turn that all around.

11. Darrell Wallbridge

Darrell founded a local nationalist party in his native Coffs Harbour (1981) … passed into National Action (1982-91) and was a candidate for [the] Confederate Action Party. He joined the first incorporation of [the] Australia First Party in 2004 and the new Australia First in 2007.

Darrell Wallbridge is a clown. No, really: he entertains children and grown-ups alike when he dons his clown outfit. Well, those who attend their kids’ parties — and the weirdos who attend the Sydney Forum.

So there you have it: 9 middle-aged fascist zombies + one elderly racist + one young real estate agent from Newcastle with a deep suspicion of The Jew = the face of “Australianism” in 2009.

Bonus TISM!