Most of the people at Melbourne’s so-called kids rally against Pauline Hanson dealt with me the same way, by surrounding me and shouting. One young woman was different. She didn’t have her facts right, and she wasn’t going to pretend I’d won her over, but she was willing to stand there and argue in good faith, which put her ahead of about 95 per cent of the crowd.

Her case against Hanson was sincere. She opposed One Nation on gay marriage and on immigration, and she was upset that Hanson wanted to scrap the royal commission into disability abuse, because one of her best friends is disabled. She also told me politely that the rally wasn’t really my space and that I should stick to my own crowds, since walking into the middle of a protest looks like fishing for a reaction. I told her I think all of Australia should be open to all of us. If someone comes up respectfully, I’ll respond respectfully. If someone comes up screaming and looking unhinged, they make great content and probably send a few more people to One Nation.

On gay marriage she was sure Hanson wanted to reverse it, and pointed me to Hanson’s voting record. When I mentioned that Hanson’s longtime chief of staff was a gay man, she accepted it without getting defensive and said it was the votes that mattered. I asked whether she could understand someone opposing gay marriage because they believe marriage is between a man and a woman, while having nothing against gay people. She didn’t agree, but she backed everyone’s right to religion and argued that church and state should be kept apart. On that point we were on the same side.

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We parted company over Gaza. I asked whether she found it odd that a transgender activist in a bikini had been on stage shouting “free Palestine”, when that person wouldn’t last a minute in Gaza. She said the point was to raise awareness somewhere safe, and then claimed children there were being raped by Israeli officers. I told her that was complete nonsense, and that the only place in the Middle East where that activist would be safe is Israel. She pulled back to the broader point that war is horrific, which it is.

 

 

What stayed with me was what she said about the crowd. She agreed that protests should be loud but thought people talking one on one shouldn’t be yelling at each other, because the left and right are too busy dividing to hold a conversation. She said she didn’t really align with the socialists or the communists, didn’t know the rally was a socialist event until later on, and believed kids are smart enough to make up their own minds, even with Victorian Socialists recruiting from every corner.

I think she’s naive about how hard those people are working on kids her age. But anyone who can disagree with me to my face without screaming can still change their mind, and in ten years I’d bet some of her views will look very different. Stay to the final moments of the video and you’ll see why she engaged like a normal person. Put simply, she was raised right.

You won’t see conversations like this on their ABC, so share it far and wide. If you want us to keep hitting the streets and having them, please help cover our security costs at ProtectAvi.com.