u/Agitated-Fee3598

Ol mate Rudds got a substack now

A neo-Nazi group, which is aiming to start a political party and was last week banned as a hate group, has launched legal action against the commonwealth that will test the constitutional validity of the prohibition.

The federal government on Friday banned neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Network (NSN), also known as White Australia, by listing it as a prohibited hate group under legislation passed in the wake of December’s Bondi beach terror attack.

The group had declared it would disband in the hours before the legislation was introduced at a special sitting of parliament in January.

But the minister for home affairs, Tony Burke, said on Friday that the group had instead “phoenixed” and its members had continued organising.

Burke said the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) had recommended in April that the government consider listing White Australia. That same month, the group lodged an application with the Australian Electoral Commission to register as a political party.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic ‌of Congo and Uganda a "public health emergency of international concern".

At least 80 deaths have been reported with international spread confirmed. 

However, the outbreak does not meet pandemic criteria, and the WHO has advised against border closures.

A few days after the South Australian state election in March, Pauline Hanson took her seat in the Great Hall at Parliament House for the annual “Science Meets Parliament” dinner. Each year, this marquee event brings academics, policymakers and parliamentarians together for a couple of days of networking and professional development. 

On Hanson’s table sat some of Australia’s eminent researchers: a microbiologist who’d helped introduce a new vaccine for children, high-profile astronomers and science communicators, and an award-winning climate scientist. Hanson was prompt in offering those seated near her a glass of water and asking their names – the polite small talk of a formal evening event. 

Earlier in the day, One Nation had been celebrating the party’s victories in the SA election and promoting its error-filled climate policies on its X account: “Climate change department and large-scale renewable projects on Pauline Hanson’s post-SA hit list” read one post. 

One might think that kind of rhetoric would see Hanson and the scientists in the room engage in a few venomous clashes or stinging interactions; the firebrand copping a Morrison-in-Cobargo style rebuke. Or maybe Hanson and her One Nation WA stablemate Tyron Whitten, seated a few tables away, would be left to awkwardly push a cold finger of medium-rare beef around with their forks, outcast and ignored.

As One Nation’s popularity surges, and it attracts the attention of more Australians alienated by the major parties, the STEM sector – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – must wrestle with how it constructively engages with a party that has often been hostile towards it. Particularly given that the sector in Australia is built on a solid foundation of hard work, imagination and innovation by a hugely productive immigrant population. More than half of employees in the sector are born overseas, according to the chief scientist’s STEM Workforce report in 2020, and more than a third are culturally and linguistically diverse. 

What should that engagement look like? At “Science Meets Parliament”, it was all smiles. Once the festivities had concluded and attendees were free to network, Hanson found herself constantly surrounded by scientists keen to converse or snap selfies with her. “Group after group … would come up to her and talk to her for three or four minutes, and then drift off, and they’d be replaced immediately by another group,” says Toss Gascoigne, who established the event in 1999 and was seated at Hanson’s table. 

The morning after, images from the evening began filtering onto social media. One attendee who had been seated at Hanson’s table, posted: “it was my personal highlight”. The message was accompanied by a photo of the pair beaming.

Ryan Winn, the chief executive of peak industry body Science and Technology Australia, which organises the event, reflected on in a LinkedIn post the next day: “science and evidence must remain apolitical, even when it doesn’t always feel that way” and all attendees were “engaging in good faith, united by a shared understanding that evidence matters”. His post was also accompanied by a snap of himself and Hanson, smiling side by side.

A handful of voices in the STEM sector quickly served a “Please explain” under Winn’s photo. One of those voices was Yung En Chee, an applied ecologist at the University of Melbourne. “I was just shocked,” says Chee, who did not attend the gala dinner. She is concerned that Winn’s image presented a “legitimising” of Hanson and her party’s politics, despite the claim of apoliticism. 

Chee came from Singapore to Australia in the late 1990s, when the Hanson phenomenon first roared to life. She remembers her early experiences in Canberra being tainted by the politician’s racist rhetoric. The shadow of the “swamped by Asians” opening speech to parliament in 1996 still looms for East Asians, she says.

These days, Chee is more concerned about how Hanson and One Nation have disrespected First Nations and Indigenous Australians, referencing the party’s MPs turning their backs on the Acknowledgement of Country at the opening of parliament in July 2025 and stoking hatred during the Voice to Parliament referendum. Indeed, multiple attendees tell me Hanson ignored the spirited Welcome to Country at the gala dinner.

According to the organisers, little else seemed to draw the ire of attendees.

“No negative feedback has been received from SMP delegates about the senator’s dinner attendance, with feedback largely of surprise at her willingness to attend and then, for those who spoke to her, of her openness for conversation and approachability,” a spokesperson told The Monthly. 

While Hanson’s openness and approachability is great for conversation at a ritzy dinner, it sits uneasily with her party’s history of bigotry, its ill-informed policies in areas such as climate and health, or its continued refutation of expertise and evidence. I contacted Senator Hanson with specific questions about her engagement with “Science Meets Parliament” and the STEM sector. A spokesperson noted she had been attending the event for several years and that “many in the scientific community are very keen to engage with Senator Hanson and One Nation … Senator Hanson takes a strong interest in science, technology and innovation, and she frequently meets with members of the scientific community to help inform One Nation policy development.” 

It’s apt to consider a statement on One Nation’s own website in this light: “The history of science is that it’s the evidence that counts.” 

“There is no evidence in any of One Nation’s rhetoric and actions over the past two decades that they’ve been open to engaging with the scientific community in good faith, nor shown a willingness to change their positions when presented with overwhelming scientific evidence,” says Kurt Sengul, a Macquarie University researcher who has explored the nexus between the media and far-right populism.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in climate science. For instance, One Nation’s website claims “there is a growing concern about the evidence on which the claims of man-made global warming rests”. No such concern exists. There is a vast, robust body of data that points to human-caused global warming. Evidence has accumulated over decades, using a range of different verified methods. Dozens of scientific papers just this year have reinforced the idea that humanity has been heating the planet, and it is humanity’s actions heating it faster than ever before.

One climate scientist who attended the gala dinner – and asks to remain anonymous – tells me they conversed with Hanson and says they came away feeling she had not expressed a willingness to get into scientific conversations. Reflecting on the evening and the selfies with the party leader, they say, “it felt like we were normalising something that to me is quite negative”.

And there are numerous instances where One Nation has discredited the work of other scientists or accused them of fudging the data. For a decade, Senator Malcolm Roberts has erroneously declared that NASA and the Bureau of Meteorology have corrupted weather data. During Covid, Hanson incorrectly suggested car-crash deaths would be counted as deaths from the virus. 

What should we make of this and many other occasions on the public record, where One Nation has denied the evidence and worked against the efforts of the STEM sector and academic expertise?

For Chee, it doesn’t mean closing the door on them. “I don’t necessarily think you ought to ban a political party, as odious as they may be,” she says. What she would prefer to see is an opportunity for the STEM sector to learn about the history of these parties and reflect on their rhetoric. “I think there needs to be an opportunity to educate ourselves critically.” 

Gascoigne, who saw how in demand Hanson was on the night, agrees. “You’ve got to engage with them, and you’ve got to find points of agreement and work where you can,” he says. Science and Technology Australia has no plans to limit who can attend “Science Meets Parliament”, with a spokesperson noting that it “must engage with all parliamentarians to deliver on our mission and to support science and technology wherever possible”. 

That seems reasonable. It’s what we demand of a democracy. But the challenge, Sengul says, is to navigate engagement with the far right in a way that doesn’t amplify or legitimise it. “The risk is that One Nation will use the meeting and photo opportunity as a propaganda victory,” he says. 

This leaves an uneasy feeling in the stomach, and not from the Parliament House hors d’oeuvres, the cuts of beef, or any of the house wines. No, this unease comes from a smiling selfie or two, and what that might represent. It’s a gambit that risks normalising views openly hostile to science, even as the event’s organisers say it “does not condone nor support many of the comments or policy positions of the senator or her party”. 

If it is, as One Nation proclaims, the evidence that counts, then the evidence tells us that the party’s misinformation campaigns, disrespect for expertise and cultural diversity, and reluctance to engage with evidence, do not strengthen democracy. They undermine it.

The Allan government is working to devise new donation laws after the High Court last month found previous laws unconstitutional.

Ahead of the state election in November, there are no donation laws in place, meaning there are no laws banning foreign donations, no limit on donations, and no requirements to disclose them.

Labor sources say proposed laws will be brought before parliament next month.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor has vowed to amend the Sex Discrimination Act, after the Federal Court upheld a landmark ruling that the exclusion of a transgender woman from a female-only app was discriminatory.

Yesterday Roxanne Tickle was awarded $20,000 dollars in damages in the case against the Giggle for Girls app and its CEO, Sall Grover.

A judge previously ruled Ms Tickle was discriminated against due to her gender identity after her access to the social media platform was restricted in 2021.

n a statement posted to social media today, Mr Taylor said the outcome "confirmed that Australian law does not properly protect single sex spaces for women and girls”.

The Coalition’s plan to tie migration to housing completions and bar non-citizens from welfare programs is a “shameful” choice that makes immigrants feel less safe and damages social cohesion, multicultural leaders say.

The long-awaited announcement of the opposition’s immigration policy came days after the Liberals lost the Farrer byelection to a resurgent One Nation. There, Pauline Hanson’s party campaigned extensively on slashing migration rates to less than half the current setting.

“It’s shameful that these politicians are targeting future Australians, people who are on valid visas that are paying taxes, giving back, and yet they are not being treated as human beings,” said Amar Singh, founder of the charity Turbans 4 Australia and winner of Australia’s 2023 Local Hero award.

“It’s really hurting the community’s sentiment and mental health, this constant battering about migration. Every migrant feels that pain. We always get pointed out for everything, but at the end of the day, Australia is built on migration.”