Just eight days passed between an Australian-born white supremacist murdering 50 men, women and children as they prayed in their home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, and the people of New South Wales electing the retired former leader of the federal opposition, failed prime ministerial candidate and erstwhile shock jock, Mark Latham, to an eight year seat in its Upper House representing Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON).
The whole world, including Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, had praised NZ PM Jacinda Ardern, both for her compassionate, nuanced and respectful response to the Christchurch massacre, and for firmly renouncing Islamophobia. When, six days after she first spoke to her people, her government made it unlawful to possess the kind of high-powered automatic firearms and magazines the killer had, lawfully, bought for his purpose, even Latham supported it.
Yet even as the people and leaders of other countries applauded Ardern's profoundly dignified response to the attack on Muslim immigrants, many empty vessels of the Australian conservative media were calling for the right to incite racial and religious hatred as a necessary part of freedom of speech.
Meanwhile, the federal government equivocated over 'putting One Nation last' as it considered how to campaign for a win at the election due in May. This, despite observing the antics of a former PHON candidate, Fraser Anning, who, with his unabashed fascist tendencies, slipped into federal parliament and promptly became an independent instead of a PHON MP, because of his position on a PHON how-to-vote sheet and deals done with other parties.
PHON's policies taken to the NSW election included commitments to 'maintain the 1996 national gun laws that have played a role in preventing public massacres in Australia for 23 years' and 'crack down on the illegal importation of guns into Australia as a vital public safety measure'. Of course, these commitments were also linked to minimising 'the chance of radical Islamic terrorists getting hold of weaponry for their evil purposes'.
(In case PHON's other policies have not come to your attention, dear reader, they are profoundly anti-Islamic, in recent times portraying lunatics in cars mowing down pedestrians as part of the 'threat' that immigrants of Muslim persuasion bring with them to Australia, especially if they arrive in boats.)
What hypocrisy was on display then when we learned this week that PHON's tremulous leader was well aware that late in 2018 her chief of staff James Ashby and leading policy influencer Steve Dixon had embarked on a secret, expensive visit to the US to campaign for top-level support, advice and funding agreements from the NRA and its funders and supporters, with a view to introducing a 'gun rights' culture into Australia.
"Somehow, this 'party of bullies' continues to play a fringe but influential role in Australian policy-making and public opinion."
How is it that with so few people 'on the ground', with sharp divisions among its spokespeople, and with the flight of PHON candidates, once elected, to continue to hold their seats as independents, the party may sneak into a position where, as Ashby and Dickson mused in their ultimately unsuccessful US jaunt, they 'hold the balls of the government' in their sweaty little hands?
As Jeff Sparrow noted following the Christchurch attack, the killer's manifesto (gibberish though it was) bewailed the truth that the right can't mobilise people on the same large scale as the left. It's true that although PHON and Latham have a 'base' of fearful, uninformed folk, they do not have anything like the 'armies' that climate change or inhumane border policies or the cruelty of the live animal export trade provoke onto the streets.
Yet in NSW, PHON and Latham still got the votes, despite holding as reprehensible views as the Christchurch killer about immigration, white supremacy, Islamophobia, and even the proper role of women and their human rights. Somehow, this 'party of bullies' (as Alex McKinnon described them in the Guardian) continues to play a fringe but influential role in Australian policy-making and public opinion.
Australia's responses to the massacre in New Zealand have sharply exposed how different our respective national cultures are, and how vulnerable people are to hate speech and its consequences. While Ardern's immediate and spontaneous leadership of a little country struck to the heart by lethal, cold-hearted violence in the name of white supremacy called down racial and religious hatred, Australian speech remained, in large part, chilling.
We, the people of 'Australasia', are at a crossroads. If we sow the seeds of hate, through dog-whistling and hate speech, we will reap the consequences. It's time to build a society, otherwise we will tear ourselves apart.
Moira Rayner is a barrister and writer.
Main image: Mark Latham and 2GB shock jock Alan Jones in 2017 during the launch of Latham's book Outsiders - I won't be silenced' (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)