Wayne Swan likens Hanson to Trump and says Labor must stop One Nation’s ‘dark, dystopic picture of the future’

Labor must not allow increasingly authoritarian trends in Australian politics to become “normalised”, ALP president Wayne Swan has warned, likening Pauline Hanson’s attacks on multiculturalism and journalists to Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of American civic life. “A toxic seed blooms into a garden of noxious weeds when we stop gardening,” the former treasurer said on Friday. Swan told a meeting of Labor’s national executive the party needed to resist One Nation at the next election like it did the former opposition leader, Peter Dutton, at the 2025 poll, preventing “a dark, dystopic picture of the future” becoming a reality. “People shrug. It gets normalised. Then it gets implemented. Then it just exists,” he said. “Now we can see the true nature of the threat we all face and we will not let it become the new normal. We will not shrug our shoulders. “We have seen overseas that it is harder to resist this dark brand of politics after it has taken root. Ask our friends across the Pacific. In cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, where they have seen the national guard deployed against their own people.” Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Ahead of handing over the Labor presidency at next month’s national conference, Swan said Hanson’s plans to shutdown SBS and move the ABC to a subscription model, and her push for Australia to be a “monoculture” were ominous. “This was all bad enough. …