Introduction by Croakey: The health sector should convene a summit to address the threats from the rise of populism, especially for First Nations people, according to Adjunct Professor Scott Wilson.
Wilson, an Aboriginal man of the Stolen Generations from Darwin, is Chair of the Penington Institute, CEO of the Aboriginal Drug and Alcohol Council (South Australia), Deputy Co-Convenor of the Coalition of Peaks, and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Sydney.
His call comes as many media organisations and journalists uncritically amplify One Nation’s talking points about Australia as a “monoculture” without acknowledging the diversity of First Nations cultures that have cared for these lands and waters over millennia.
Scott Wilson writes:
At the National Press Club on 17 June, a journalist from The Guardian, Sarah Martin, asked One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson a question about her daughter Lee Hanson.
The query, which followed on from an article published by The Guardian in February, was about Lee Hanson receiving a public salary as a NSW Senator’s staffer, while seemingly campaigning for election in lutruwita/Tasmania.
In reply, Pauline Hanson attacked Martin personally, calling her a “trashy journalist”, saying she would be banned from One Nation events and media conferences (see the question and reply in full at 1.07.54 in this recording).
When this happened, I thought all of the other journalists in that National Press Club room should have stood up and walked out.
We’ve seen that sort of behaviour before, with United States President Donald Trump attacking particular journalists.
Whether it’s Donald Trump or Pauline Hanson, journalists should not be tolerating that sort of behaviour from politicians.
And neither should they be giving them oxygen. The National Press Club gave Hanson the opportunity for a national platform, broadcast into homes and offices around Australia, to disparage First Nations peoples and our rights.
Rather than giving them oxygen, the media could be denying them airtime, and not circulating the lies and misinformation.
Everyone watching that National Press Club heard Pauline Hanson called climate change “a hoax”. Was that statement even challenged by the journalists attending?
Living in Adelaide and regularly visiting Darwin, where I grew up, I can vouch that climate change is already harming communities.
I see people living in houses that were built decades ago and are ill-equipped for the reality of extreme heat, which will only become more frequent and more intense.
We only have to look at the recent news from Europe to see the impacts of extreme heat, upon communities, workplaces, services, infrastructure and more.
Speak up
I would like to see health and medical organisations like the AMA speaking up to counter such misinformation. I thought we were past that climate denialism from Howard and Abbott’s era.
I also worry about the impact of these populists upon community support for vaccination; we’re seeing outbreaks of old diseases like diphtheria, measles and tuberculosis.
Pauline Hanson also told the National Press Club that One Nation wants to stop all Indigenous programs.
The work we do with the Close the Gap campaign is constantly under attack from One Nation and other politicians, who don’t even come to meet with us to find out what we’re doing.
It’s worth noting that about half of the signatories to the National Agreement on Closing the Gap were Liberal governments. You’d be surprised at the breadth of things that Closing the Gap has delivered for Aboriginal people; it’s a ten-year process of creating change.
We need collective efforts from across the health sector, led by NACCHO, the Coalition of the Peaks, First Nations organisations and health leaders, to fight back against this tide of misinformation and disinformation.
I’d like to see them come together in some form of a summit – Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, to sit down and realise there is a threat to our health and wellbeing if people such as her do get in to power, and have got the levers of the Health Department.
You just have to look at the playbook of United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Hanson has already said that she wants to pull Australia out of the World Health Organization and the United Nations.
We need to have respected health leaders speaking up about the importance of evidence, of health, of rights and justice for First Nations people. We need to develop broad coalitions, across and beyond the health sector.
You don’t have to comment on everything that is said, but it’s important to have respected spokespeople come out and push back on the facts. And put it in the language the public understand, especially those who might be drifting towards supporting One Nation.
Previously at Croakey
- Why a public health response is needed to address the harms of populism
- Health leaders respond to Pauline Hanson and the rise of populism
- Following the bulldozer stunt, health advocate issues a call for action
- How should health organisations and advocates respond to One Nation?
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the Trump Administration and health
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