Far-right-wing parties after your vote on election day

From a party calling for an end to the “Islamisation of Australia” to another whose leader has a criminal past — how much do Australians know about these parties?

After being deposed as prime minister last year, Tony Abbott warned that a splinter right-wing movement could damage the Coalition.

“The last thing we need is another conservative party, particularly a rogue conservative party that is raging against the world. That’s the last thing we need,” Mr Abbott told Fairfax last year.

He also said the emergence of One Nation almost led to defeat for John Howard in 1998.

Will the rise of Donald Trump in the US, some Coalition voters disenfranchised with Malcolm Turnbull and the rising threat of terrorism lead to a groundswell of support for these extreme parties?

What realistic chances do they have on July 2 or are they just standing for election to make some noise? News.com.au went to find out.

Australia First Party’s Jim Saleam, at his Tempe home and office in Sydney.Source:News Corp Australia

‘THE RACIST LABEL DOESN’T BOTHER ME’

Jim Saleam is a survivor of far right politics in Australia. He has stood in elections since the 1980s, helped start the nationalist party National Action in 1982 and has spent time in jail.

He now runs the Australia First Party out of his home on a busy highway in Tempe, south of Sydney.

The party will have candidates contesting the Federal Election, including Dr Saleam standing in the western Sydney seat of Lindsay.

It is an important area for the anti-immigration party, with debate over a mosque at Kemps Creek helping Australia First gain some traction.

(The party had a councillor elected to Penrith Council in 2012 before he resigned from the party to continue on council as an independent councillor).

Most recently, Dr Saleam stood against Treasurer Scott Morrison at the 2013 election and only gained 617 votes.

But the party isn’t really interested in getting elected. It’s just keen to get its controversial message out there.

“We see the electoral process as a chance to put some of our views out there but also an opportunity to mobilise people around movements and issues,” Dr Saleam tells news.com.au.

The party’s “eight core policies” include an end to multiculturalism and limiting immigration to white Europeans.

An Australia First sign at an anti-immigration forum.Source:News Corp Australia

They want to see the White Australia policy reinstated.

“I had the great privilege of being born into that sort of Australia. And I made a personal decision many years ago that my children would die in that sort of Australia,” Dr Saleam said.

He mocked other far right parties such as the Australian Liberty Alliance that are opposed to Islamic immigration.

“Diversity minus Islam is still diversity.

“As Pauline Hanson always says there’s a right way and a wrong way (to enter Australia). We say, ‘No right way, no wrong way, no way’.”

He believes Australians are being “ethnically cleansed”.

But Dr Saleam’s past and the party’s extreme views mean it will never attract a big following.

(The party was deregistered last year because of a lack of members, only to be reinstated this year when it reached the minimum number of members of 500).

In the 1990s, he was jailed for three and a half years for supplying a gun to two men who shot up the home of an African National Congress representative.

(After getting out of jail, Dr Saleam spent five years at Sydney University where he did a PhD on right wing politics in Australia).

He still maintains he was set up by the police and his case was one of “four great political trials in Australia”.

As for being labelled a racist, he doesn’t seem to mind.

“I really don’t care. It’s something that’s inevitably said because obviously I exercise a racial preference,” he said.

“The label of racist doesn’t really disturb me that much, it’s more (important) that people read what we actually do say.”

Kirralie Smith will stand for the Australian Liberty Alliance. Picture: John GraingerSource:News Corp Australia

‘I CALL A SPADE A SPADE’

Kirralie Smith rose to prominence with her anti-halal website Halal Choices, which has more than 24,000 followers on Facebook and aims to take action against the halal industry.

She saw a move into politics as the next logical step.

She will contest the Federal Election in the NSW Senate with the new far right-wing party Australian Liberty Alliance. The anti-immigration party will have candidates running for the Senate in every state and territory.

The party was launched by anti-immigration Dutch MP Geert Wilders late last year, with Ms Smith saying it now has “thousands of members”.

Ms Smith is quick to point out the party has 21 policies, but its anti-Islam stance has naturally drawn the most attention.

Among its core policies is to “stop the Islamisation of Australia” and for “integration over separation”.

“Islam is not merely a religion, it is a totalitarian ideology with global aspirations,” the party’s website says. The party says Islam “seeks dominance over all aspects of human life and society”.

Ms Smith got involved with the party because of her concern about “political correctness”.

“I thought if I waited any longer then we might be in real trouble,” she told news.com.au.

Ms Smith said political correctness was “shutting down debate” on issues such as same sex marriage and the Safe Schools policy.

Controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders meets Senate candidates for Australian Liberty Alliance Kirralie Smith and Bernard Gaynor.Source:News Corp Australia

Mr Wilders has been a controversial figure in European politics. He has compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and called for it to be banned.

“I may not agree with every statement he’s made, but I generally agree with his sentiment. I’m generally on the same page, but maybe I wouldn’t say things the same way he does,” Ms Smith said.

“I’ve read the Koran, but haven’t read Mein Kampf, so I couldn’t make that comparison. But what I will say is the Koran is an extremely dangerous book.

“There are over 100 passages that incite violence against non-Muslims.”

Ms Smith said claims the party was racist were “ignorant”.

“We have members of all backgrounds and all ethnic grounds and all belief systems, well almost all belief systems,” she said.

When asked if the party had any Muslim members, Ms Smith said: “I don’t know, I don’t know every member”.

The party and Ms Smith have been likened to Trump because of calls for zero immigration, with Ms Smith laughing off any similarities.

“That’s just sensationalism,” she said. “I’m not going for prime minister, but I just call a spade a spade. That’s about as far as the comparison can go.”

Pauline Hanson is back in charge of One Nation.Source:News Limited

‘WHAT I SAID YEARS AGO IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING’

It was Pauline Hanson’s One Nation that was the first right wing party to win widespread appeal when it was formed in 1997.

The party outpolled the Greens and the Australian Democrats in the following year’s Federal Election in the lower house. They received one million votes for the Senate to win one seat.

Now back at the helm of One Nation, Ms Hanson will run for a Queensland Senate seat at the Federal Election.

Ms Hanson, who has been more known for her appearance on Dancing with the Stars in recent years, shot to fame with her maiden speech in Parliament in 1996.

Then the independent MP for Oxley, she said Australia was being “swamped by Asians”.

“(They) have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate,” she said.

Twenty years later, Ms Hanson said voters had realised what she said all those years ago had proven correct.

“I’ve been on the political scene for 20 years and people are realising that what I said years ago is actually happening,” she told news.com.au.

In her maiden speech, she also called for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to be disbanded (it was in 2005) and opposed privatising Telstra.

Ms Hanson also said offshore processing for asylum seekers was another One Nation policy later implemented.

The former fish and chip shop owner has contested state and federal elections in recent years without success.

Last year she narrowly lost the seat of Lockyer in the Queensland State Election by 214 votes after preferences.

She said changes to Senate voting at the July 2 election would give her a greater chance of a return to federal politics.

“Previously the Liberals, Nationals and the Greens have always preferenced One Nation last. This gives the preferences back to the voters,” she said.

Ms Hanson said preferences had always “destroyed” One Nation.

But Ms Hanson was dismissive of parties such as the Australian Liberty Alliance.

“They’re a one issue party — you’ve got to look beyond that,” Ms Hanson told news.com.au.

A protest of Australia First Party supporters in 2014 is meet with hostility next to the memorial for terrorist siege victims in Martin Place. Picture: Stephen CooperSource:News Corp Australia

‘PARTIES WITH EXTREME VIEWS GENERALLY POLL VERY POORLY’

Political expert Zareh Ghazarian said micro parties such as the Liberty Alliance, Australia First and One Nation would poll poorly at the July 2 poll.

Dr Ghazarian, from Monash University, said Australian voters had flirted with micro parties such as the Palmer United Party and the Liberal Democrats at the 2013 election.

“We’ve already got that out of the system,” he said.

But Dr Ghazarian said for parties such as the Liberty Alliance and Australia First, contesting elections was more about getting their message out than winning seats.

“New micro parties bordering on extreme views, generally do very very poorly — polling about 1 to 1.5 per cent of the vote,” he said.

“But what their role is, is to alert people to the issues they want debated and they’re doing that very effectively.”

Dr Ghazarian said right wing parties would struggle to get wide support because there were too many of them.

“What is disadvantaging these parties is how diverse and broad they are. There’s no central organisation,” he said.

“For the left of centre there is the Greens. But for the right of centre, what do they stand for?”

He also said One Nation’s time had come and gone.

“One Nation promised so much as an outsider, but as an insider it couldn’t deliver,” he said.

Pauline Hanson is unsure of whether or not she has any Muslim friends0:37

Pauline Hanson says she's unsure of whether or not she has ever had a Muslim friend. Courtesy: The TODAY Show/Channel Nine

• October 8th 2015
• 4 years ago
• /display/newscorpaustralia.com/Web/NewsNetwork/Entertainment - syndicated/