The rehabilitation of Alex Hawke

I wouldn't have thought that the Sydney Morning Herald would be the place we'd see the beginnings of the rehabilitation of that creepy fellow pictured above, the far-right Liberal and extremist consort Alex Hawke.

The presumed religious zealotry of Clarke and Hawke has prompted controversy. But it is a misinterpretation of what brings them together. Clarke is Catholic; Hawke was raised an Anglican who occasionally is attracted to Hillsong's happy clapping.

Damien Murphy presumes that the proclaimed Catholic and Anglican religions of Clarke and Hawke make them somehow religiously incompatible and serves to distance Hawke from Clarke. That extremism isn't a religion in and of itself. For many politicians, their religion is just a label to help them attain a sense of respectability. John Howard isn't very christian in his attitudes towards refugees, something that puts him more at odds with many protestants than it does with Tony Abbott, a catholic. The same goes for Hawke and Clarke: religion is used as an excuse for certain bigoted and narrow-minded beliefs. If Clarke wasn't religious he'd be called a Nazi. Thanks to his religion, he becomes a more respectable 'conservative'. That applies also to Hawke. The 'happy clapping' of Hillsong is not what attracts him to the religion, it's the power. Hawke envisions a time when the political situation in Australia mirrors that of America even more closely than it does now. When the far right are able to claim religion as their sole domain and use it to legitimise their bigotry. That's why Hawke his his finger in the Hillsong pie, not because he loves to wave his hands in the air and sing about Jesus.

Murphy is quite careful not to make it a puff-piece. No-one would buy it, given Hawke's background and association with Clarke. The article is designed to appeal to the sort of people who would be tempted to like Hawke anyway but need to gloss over the fact that he is a close associate of a Nazi-lover. Little bits of Labor-bashing permeate the piece- references to the "porcine, potty-mouthed" Joe McDonald, to Albanese's 'smears' enable Murphy to scrape up a little heap of dung to use as a pedestal for Hawke.

It wouldn't surprise me to see more such items, steadily more grovelling, appear in the media in the lead-up to the election and beyond. Hawke has a bucketful of ambition; he does not intend to stop at obtaining a seat in parliament- he intends to float all the way to the top.

Alex Hawke in his own words:

On the stolen generation: "There is no generation. I think Keith Windschuttle has got it exactly right. There has been this deliberate attempt to rewrite history. To say we came here and raped and pillaged and murdered - and they do, they carry on awfully about it - is quite appalling."

Religion and politics: "Do I inject my religion into my politics? No, but my religion guides the values and the ethics of the things I do."

Hawke thinks Australia will move increasingly towards an American model of conservatism. "The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity, and when they're blended it's a very powerful duo."

John Howard once said the Liberal Party was a broad church but Hawke is not so sure. "People say it's a broad church. My response to that is you've got to agree it's a church. It's not a brothel, for instance. If people want to legalise drug-injecting rooms, lower the age of consent, go with all these trendy things, this is not the party that believes in those things. We're not that broad."

On Malcolm Fraser: "We are still suffering the effects of Malcolm Fraser's government. We ought not to suffer the effects of him, as a human being, still attacking our party and our ideological beliefs! Let's get him into the Greens where he belongs."