Abstract

In the 1990's the most powerful right-wing populist party in Australian history, One Nation Party , was formed and led by Pauline Hanson. Populist parties, like Pauline Hanson's One Nation , have traditionally been a masculine domain yet Hanson masterfully gained support for her views by deploying the powerful rhetoric of home and family. This thesis illuminates Hanson's use of traditional notions of femininity such as mother, care-giver, and teacher in her speeches and charts the way that these gendered representations shaped key policy issues on multi-culturalism, immigration, globalisation and the family. This discourse helped Hanson articulate a politics of resentment which appealed to a constituency comprised, primarily, of "white" Australian men displaced from their traditional place of social, cultural and political privilege. To gain a greater understanding of Hanson's discursive manoeuvres, an examination of letters written by women to the editors of major Australian newspapers was undertaken. This media analysis reveals how this domestic discourse was adopted by women who supported Hanson and by women who were opposed to Hanson's racially-based views. This thesis indicates how women who opposed Hanson negotiated her domestic rhetoric to counter to her policies.