Pauline Hanson
Pauline Hanson (b.August 26, 1954) is a controversial right wing
Australian politician.
Background
She was a member of the Liberal Party of Australia, and from 1994
to 1996, was a local councillor in the City of Ipswich, Queensland.
She was endorsed as the Liberal Party's candidate for the House of
Representatives electorate of Oxley (based on Ipswich) for the
March 1996 Federal election. After the 1993 Federal election, the
electorate of Oxley was the safest one held by the Australian Labor
Party in the entire State of Queensland. However, comments she made
to The Queensland Times, a daily newspaper in Ipswich, advocating
the abolition of special government assistance for Aboriginals
above what was available for other Australians led to her
disendorsement by the party during the campaign. With the Liberal
Party's name still appearing on the ballot paper and nominations
having been closed by the Australian Electoral Commission for the
registration of candidates so no other Liberal Party candidate
appeared on the ballot paper, Pauline Hanson won the election
easily, with the largest swing away from the Labor Party in
Australia.
Maiden speech
In September 1996, Hanson made her maiden speech to the House of
Representatives, which instantly made headlines and the television
news bulletins right across Australia. She expressed her concern
that Australia "will be swamped by Asians", suggested the
withdrawal of Australia from the United Nations, advocated the
return of high-tariff protectionism and generally decried many
other aspects of what she labled as 'political correctness' and
free market economics.
As a result of her maiden speech, Hanson became a very
controversial figure, with the Australian population divided on
whether Hanson was speaking the plain truth (a view more likely to
be held in regional areas), a dangerous racist, or a misinformed
yokel. Hanson's critics derided what they saw as her inarticulate
style; the very trait that her supporters took to be evidence of
her credentials as a speaker 'for the people'. Her unaffected
approach was parodied by satirists such as the TV show Full
Frontal.
One Nation
On the back of her relatively small but loyal supporter base, in
April 1997 she founded Pauline Hanson's One Nation, in concert with
her senior advisor David Oldfield and professional fundraiser David
Ettridge. Many of her branch formation meetings and political
rallies across Australia in the next two years would attract
protests, occasionally spilling over to political violence between
Hanson supporters and left wing protestors.
The peak of Hanson's success occurred in June 1998, when One Nation
attracted nearly one-quarter of the vote in that month's State
elections in Queensland, and One Nation won 11 out of 89 seats in
that State's single-chamber Parliament.
Declining popularity
Ever since then, Hanson's popularity has declined. During the
campaign for the Federal election of October 3, 1998, she supported
a number of policies which alienated much of her support base, such
as the abolition of pensions for single mothers, the abolition of
all taxes to be replaced with a 2% tax on all financial
transactions, and the reduction of the universal coverage of
Australia's Medicare system.
She lost her seat in Parliament after an electoral redistribution
split Oxley before the 1998 election. She contested the
neighbouring electorate of Blair and won the largest portion of
votes - 36% of the total votes, about 15% more than her nearest
rival. However, due to Australia's complicated system of
preferential voting in which a candidate needs a majority of the
votes to be elected, she lost to the Liberal Party candidate,
Cameron Thompson. Nationally, One Nation gained 9% of the vote, but
only one MP was elected - Len Harris as Senator for
Queensland.
At the next Federal election on November 10, 2001, she ran for a
Queensland Senate seat but narrowly failed.
She has blamed her declining popularity on the fact that Prime
Minister John Howard has "stolen her policies".
Other interrelated factors which have contributed to her downfall
include her connection with a series of Machiavellian mentors (John
Pasquarelli, David Ettridge and David Oldfield), all of whom she
has fallen out with; disputes amongst her supporters, and a lawsuit
over the organisational structure of One Nation.
In 2003 she left Queensland, moved to Sylvania Waters, Sydney in
New South Wales and stood for the NSW Upper House in the March 22
state election. It appears as though Hanson made this move to
prevent her former advisor and now arch-enemy David Oldfield's One
Nation NSW party from gaining more seats in that State's
Parliament. She lost narrowly to Shooter's Party candidate John
Tingle.
Pauline Hanson has also signalled her intention to pursue a career
in country and western music, and she has also been working as a
promoter for Australian country musician Brian Letton.
Criminal action
On 20 August 2003, a jury convicted Hanson of electoral fraud and
she was sentenced to three years imprisonment by the Supreme Court
of Queensland for falsely claiming that 500 support group members
were genuine paid up members of One Nation, in order to register it
as a political party and apply for electoral funding from the state
of Queensland. She was thereby found to have dishonestly obtained
two cheques worth AUD$498,637 from Queensland's electoral
commission as electoral funds. Justice Wolfe accepted that Hanson
had paid back the funding but said electoral processes must not be
perverted, and made a finding that Hanson had gained unfair
electoral advantage by "misrepresenting" 500 voters. Hanson's
initial reaction to the verdict was - "Rubbish, I'm not guilty.
It's a joke."
On 6 November 2003, the appeal court quashed and set aside the
convictions of both Hanson and Etteridge
(http://www.courts.qld.gov.au/qjudgment/QCA%202003/QCA03-488.pdf).
The court's unanimous decision was that:
the (more than) 500 persons on the list in fact were members of the
party;
that even if they had not been, they were clearly at least members
of a closely related party, which was sufficient under the
Electoral Act 1992 to make the registration legal;
the failure of the trial judge to refer to this point of law
(regarding related parties) in summing up was by itself sufficient
to quash the conviction;
in light of these points there was no need to rule on the
appellants many other points of appeal; and
in view of setting aside this conviction, Hanson's conviction for
property fraud (in receiving the cheques from the Electoral
Commissioner after registration), being "subsidiary" to this
conviction, was automatically overturned.
The court also criticised the public comments made about the case
by a number of prominent politicians on both sides of the political
spectrum, and also considered that had the Office of the Director
of Public Prosecutions been better resourced, "the present
difficulty may well have been avoided" (in light of accompanying
statements about the paucity of Crown evidence, presumably they
mean the case would never have been prosecuted).
The justices did not comment on whether Hanson is entitled to be
repaid the AUD$498,637 which she had repaid to the Electoral
Commissioner.
In January 2004, Hanson announced that she would not return to
politics. (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/16/1073877995439.html).
Attempted return to politics
On September 15, 2004, Hanson announced that she would be standing
as an independent candidate for the Senate in the October 9
election, declaring: "I don't want all the hangers on. I don't want
the advisers and everyone else. I want it to be this time Pauline
Hanson." She was ultimately unsuccessful, making only 0.3 of the
required quota to win the seat occupied by One Nation Senator Len
Harris, who only received 0.2 of a quota.
