Page 5213 - Week 16 - Thursday, 28 November 1991
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MR COLLAERY: I will respond to that. I think it is time we discussed in Mr Stevenson's presence in this chamber this issue and what he has turned our good Act into in the last 24 hours. (Extension of time granted)
Eric Butler, the long-term head of the League of Rights and apologist for their policies, was reported as saying that Mr Stevenson was not a member of the league and would not be eligible to join because he was a member of parliament. That has other implications and, if the league is registered, the league excluding Mr Stevenson from formal membership of its charter may be the beginning of an offence after we pass these laws.
Mr Wood: Mr Collaery, the league does not have members; that is the way around it.
MR COLLAERY: I am assisted by some advice from Mr Wood that suggests that the modus operandi of the league is such that we cannot identify the membership. So be it.
Mr Wood: They might be a threat to Mr Butler as well.
MR COLLAERY: I am indebted to Mr Wood for that interjection. What we can identify is their ethic. Their ethic is really a non-ethic. It is about peddling populist theories - the Jewish conspiracy in banking, the pornography issue, the security and integrity of the nation, and the treasonous instincts that elements of the community are seen to have.
I have mentioned before an interesting text written before the last war by a great journalist. I found it in my father's library when I was a teenager. It is a paperback that clearly outlines the modus operandi of the far Right in Nazi Germany. One of the elements dealt with in Hitler's infamous treatise was pornography. There is a whole section on the perceived licentiousness of the 1920s in Weimar Germany. I continue to see desperately disturbing parallels between Mr Stevenson's enunciated agenda here and the warnings in that paperback.
Let no-one be at all comforted by the notion that Mr Stevenson is just one among 17, that what he has been doing in the last 24 hours is a sort of cranky-headed stunt. It is a stunt that will expand his following because it is coupled with the populist theme that has been used elsewhere by people of that persuasion. It obscures the real issues in society. It elevates some issues to a higher level of importance in community consciousness than they should have. It adopts issues where right-minded citizens may well agree with the enunciations of Mr Stevenson. It elevates those into a general platform and sweeps them along on that far Right platform. I enjoin the house to make sure that all those who want to press those concerns are on notice.
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