Did Hanson's Mask Just Slip?

Senator for Queensland and president of modestly named far-right Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, Pauline Hanson pretends to care about the underdog, the Aussie battlers. But who on earth is an Aussie battler? She never explained that, did she?

Yesterday Hanson had an extended interview with Barrie Cassidy, for the ABC TV's "Insiders". Her answers are instructive.

Asked about the penalty rates cuts, Hanson, the former fish and chips shop owner, replied:

"I had my own business. Now if you go into food retail, into a fish and chip shop, I'd have to pay $34 an hour to employ someone. Yet McDonald's down the road, they can only pay $26 an hour. Oh, this is the EBAs. This is what the unions have negotiated. So they are talking about looking after the battlers. It is a big furphy. And what needs to be debated here - small business, Barrie, they're struggling. If you can actually help them out with rising electricity costs, rent prices - I know of a chemist shop in Rockhampton $70,000 a month in rent."

I know it's hard for you to make heads or tails of that. It's not your fault. Let me translate that in clear, straightforward, everyday English:

1. Hanson doesn't give a fuck about workers whose pay rates were cut;
2. for her, this is only about small-business people, the people she cares about because she was one of them and because they are her electorate, her battlers; 
3. if one small business pays its staff shit, then all small business have the same right to pay their staff shit;
4. the unions are bad, because they negotiated higher rates for some.

As an Aussie worker speaking to other Aussie workers: that creature is our enemy. Don't let yourself be fooled by her. Workers mean nothing to her. If you side with her, she'll stab you in the back and you'll make a laughing stock of yourself. Worse, you'll be an accomplice in the misery of our fellow workers, maybe even those closer to you. You'll become a traitor to them and to our class; you'll become our enemy.

You've been warned.