Wall sized flat-screen televisions hang dormant while rows of abandoned pokies chatter and flash in a dawn chorus. Blacktown RSL at 7 am is shrouded in darkness and seems an unlikely birthplace for a political campaign.
About 40 Rise Up Australia Party (RUAP) members and supporters have assembled to share breakfast with their leader, Daniel Nalliah, and listen to him speak on his vision for the nation. Here in the heart of western Sydney, within shouting distance of where Gough Whitlam launched his historic 1972 campaign, they are hoping to make 2013 their time.
Mike Bloomfield’s south London accent rises above the murmur of conversation as guests chew through a buffet of bacon, eggs and instant coffee. He is a New South Wales Senate candidate for RUAP, and is telling anyone who will listen what it was like to grow up south of the Thames amid the racial tensions of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“I was the last white person with the guts to walk into the Front Line [a local name for the Atlantic Pub in Brixton], but every single time I did, a Jamaican or African tried to kill me or mug me with either a gun, machete or knife,” he recounts, pausing to allow for expressions of horror.
“Multiculturalism has destroyed Britain. It’s no longer a United Kingdom but a divided kingdom.”
His monologue is interrupted only when two young Asian supporters rise to sing the national anthem.
Pastor Daniel Nalliah
Pastor Danny, as his spiritual and political flocks know him, is not an imposing presence, his slight frame buried in a leather jacket that almost conceals a tie emblazoned with Australian flags. He speaks with the lilting tones of his native Sri Lanka and his voice becomes increasingly shrill as he builds to a point.
His authority, however, is obvious as he marshals his team with rapid-fire directives punctuated with finger clicks. Even when reading jokes, he barely cracks a smile.
Nalliah is an evangelical pastor at the Catch the Fire Ministries in Hallam, Victoria. He rose to national prominence when the Islamic Council of Victoria brought a racial vilification case against him and fellow pastor Daniel Scot in 2002. The case was overturned on appeal and centred on statements made by the two about the threat posed by Islam in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Nalliah remains steadfast in his refusal to apologise for the statements claiming “most of the things I said were direct quotations from the Koran”. The case allowed him to cast himself as both victim and victor, and planted the seeds of political aspiration.
The RUAP leader is used to being the victim. He claims that only prayer spared his ethnically Tamil family from Sinhalese violence amid the bloodshed that tore his homeland apart in the 1980s. After leaving Sri Lanka in the 1990s, he risked being sentenced to death for his membership of an underground church that ministered and smuggled bibles into Saudi Arabia. He also insists his 2004 Senate campaign on the Family First ticket was derailed by biased media coverage.
Nalliah says adversity has only made him stronger and brought him closer to God. So much so he claims to communicate directly with his Lord through dreams. This landed him in hot water in 2008 when he claimed to have had a prophetic dream telling him the Victorian bushfires were divine retribution for the decriminalisation of abortion. This famously lost him the imprimatur of Peter Costello.
“We are not just a party for Christians; there are lots of good people throughout the Australian community,” Nalliah assures the audience, shortly after we have finished reciting the Lord’s Prayer. “Keep Australia Australian,” he declares, standing next to a banner brandishing the same slogan.
Nalliah dismisses comparisons between RUAP and One Nation, and accusations his new party is racist. “I’m a blackfella, how can this party be racist?” he asks, inviting the substantial number of Asian and sub-continental members of the audience to stand and prove his point.
“We are a multi-ethnic country where people come from many races but share a single culture. Multiculturalism simply divides us. If people come to Australia they should accept its Judeo-Christian heritage,” he says. Audience members wave small plastic Australian flags in agreement.
Nalliah plays preacher as he exhorts his followers to treat their fellow Australians of all races and creeds with love and kindness, but the sermon quickly turns to fire and brimstone when he picks up on the issue that has come to define both him and RUAP.
“Buddha taught peace, Jesus taught love, Mohammed taught war and violence,” Nalliah says to enthusiastic nodding. “When people use the Koran to justify violence, they are following the words of their leader.”
RUAP members and supporters aim to make a difference in Canberra
Plastic flags are again aflutter as Nalliah argues that sharia law is spreading its vice-like grip across Europe, with Australia next in the cross hairs.
“It’s too late,” he says of the UK where Muslims now represent 10 per cent of the population. Fortunately, he says, “they only account for 2 per cent in Australia” which still leaves time to turn back the tide.
“We might be the last hope for the nation’s future.”
This sort of call to arms resonates with the Australian Defence League (ADL), a far right, anti-Islamic organisation modelled on the controversial English Defence League (EDL). The ADL president, who chooses not to release his name publicly, is at the breakfast and talks at length with Nalliah after his speech. A photograph of the two is posted on the group’s Facebook page shortly after the event under a banner featuring the words “ban Islam” on an Australian flag.
After dedicating the lion’s share of his speech to the threat of Islam, Nalliah leaves barely five minutes at the end for a cursory run through some of RUAP’s other policy positions. These include a 49 per cent limit on foreign ownership of all Australian assets, a vague intention to support Australian farmers with tariff protection, and a desire to stop foreign boat arrivals, primarily because 80 per cent of them are Muslim.
Nalliah claims RUAP represents the voice of the silent majority and that 30 per cent of voters remain undecided about who they will vote for. The party will contest 52 lower house seats, predominantly in Victoria, and will field 12 senate candidates with a goal of getting three people elected across both houses.
These are lofty ambitions for a new party, especially when they remain almost anonymous to the political establishment. Nielson’s John Stirton said he had no polling data on them, while Ed Husic, Labor MP for Chifley and the first Muslim elected to Federal Parliament, had not heard of the party.
The breakfast concludes with a party song that demonstrates the difficulty of organising “ethnic cousin”, “culture” and “mate” into smooth, rhyming couplets.
It is 9.30am and lights have started to come on. Screens have flickered to life showing replays of old NRL games, while a handful of early morning punters perch themselves at the pokies. No-one seems particularly interested in Nalliah as he packs his things and heads for his next campaign event in Newcastle. It is just a couple of hours up the Pacific Highway to the Steel City, but the road to Canberra appears to be a far longer one.
A club staff member clearing away coffee cups politely refuses a stack of party fliers to distribute to her friends and family. It might not be time, just yet.
