The Business of Fear
Pauline Hanson’s Super Progressive Movie was released on Australia Day as a paid online stream, costing viewers $14.99. This week, One Nation escalated the project by hosting cinema screenings across the country — reportedly the first time an Australian political party has funded and promoted a feature film in this way. Tickets ranged from $99 to $129 and included a Q&A session with Hanson herself.
That price tag alone signals that this isn’t about open dialogue or cultural understanding. It is about selling an idea — and more importantly, selling fear.
The core problem with Super Progressive Movie is not that it presents a conservative viewpoint. Australia has always had room for political disagreement, and it should. The problem is that the film, and the campaign around it, actively encourages division. It frames difference as a threat. It suggests that there is, or should be, only one acceptable version of Australian culture.
That idea is not just wrong — it is fundamentally dishonest.
Does Pauline Hanson genuinely believe that Queensland farming culture is the same as inner-Sydney city culture? That surf culture is the same as death metal culture? That regional towns, suburban communities, remote Indigenous communities, and urban professional hubs all share identical values, lifestyles, and worldviews?
Of course they don’t. And they never have.
Australia is diverse — not only because of ethnic background, but because of the sheer range of beliefs, values, traditions, identities, and ways of living that exist here. That diversity is not a modern invention or a “progressive experiment”. It is the reality of a large, geographically vast nation with multiple industries, subcultures, histories, and communities layered on top of one another.
The strength of Australia has never come from forcing people into a single cultural mould. It comes from learning how to live alongside difference.
Yet Hanson and One Nation repeatedly push the idea that if you do not fit their narrow definition of what an Australian should be, then you are the problem. That you are diluting something pure. That your values, culture, or identity somehow undermine the nation.
But what if your definition of being Australian is different?
What if being Australian means living in a community that does not favour one culture, one group, or one identity over another? A community where people respect the rights of others — and expect their own rights to be respected in return. A society that understands disagreement does not require hostility, and difference does not require fear.
Fear, however, is politically useful.
It is easy to lead through fear. Easy to fuel anger, resentment, and blame. Easy to point at an “other” and say, this is why your life is harder. Fear motivates. It mobilises. It creates loyal followers who feel under siege.
The problem is that once you light that fire, it is very hard to control. Fear does not stop neatly at the edges of a campaign or an election cycle. It spreads. It hardens attitudes. It erodes trust between neighbours, communities, and generations.
And if we are not careful, we may find that what is destroyed in the flames is not some imagined threat to Australian culture — but the culture itself. The shared sense of fairness, tolerance, and mutual respect that actually allows a diverse country to function.
What we would be left with would not be stronger.
It would be far worse.