32

The Perils of Pauline Hanson

She may be best known these days as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars or the Australian version of reality TV show Celebrity Apprentice, but in the mid-1990s Pauline Hanson held the title of the most polarising politician in Australia, both revered and reviled for her opinions.

It was 1995 – the year the Oklahoma City bombing in the US killed 168 people, the year the DVD format of information storage was announced, and the year OJ Simpson was found not guilty of double murder – when Queensland fish and chip shop owner Pauline Hanson narrowly lost her seat as an independent on the Council of the City of Ipswich, about 40 minutes’ drive west of Brisbane.

At that stage of her life, the independently wealthy 41-year-old had been married twice and had four children. Popular among her local community, Hanson joined the Liberal Party of Australia and was endorsed as their candidate in the Ipswich-based federal seat of Oxley. At that time, Oxley was a blue-ribbon Labor seat with a 12.6 per cent majority, making it the party’s safest seat in Queensland. Political pundits believed Hanson was on a hiding to nothing.

But this was a woman blessed with natural charm and enthusiasm. She was a force to be reckoned with, always available to the press for interviews – when not out talking to regular Aussies on the street or taking her word to them with a door-knocking initiative, of course.

Despite taking a personal approach to politics, it was one interview that the Queensland Times conducted with Hanson that set her on the path to the infamy that would eventually see her sent to prison. In the interview, Hanson told the journalist that she believed the government should abolish aid to Aborigines above what was available to other Australian citizens. The Liberals couldn’t believe one of their candidates would make such an inflammatory remark in a public forum. They disendorsed Pauline Hanson immediately – but they were too late.

It turned out that the Australian Electoral Commission had closed nominations. The ballot papers listing Hanson as the Liberal Party’s candidate had already been printed. When it was time for voters to hit the polls, Hanson was set as the Liberal candidate. Not that it really mattered – everyone knew she didn’t have a hope in hell of winning the staunchly Labor seat.

But Labor’s credibility with the constituents of Oxley had been sliding downhill for a while, and they finally decided enough was enough. They obviously appreciated Hanson’s rhetoric and proved it by voting her in with an astonishing 19.3 per cent swing. No one could believe it – least of all the Liberals, who Hanson was quick to tell where to go and what to do with their party. She entered Parliament as an independent while being labelled a racist.

When Hanson made her opening speech at 5.15pm in Canberra’s Parliament House on Tuesday 10 September 1996, it was to a near-empty chamber – but still, she didn’t hold back, and her message came through loud and clear. The headlines in the newspapers the next day were all about the fiery redhead’s call for Australia’s Asian immigration policy to be reviewed and multiculturalism to be abolished.

If that wasn’t enough to ensure her instant notoriety around the country, she also called for the reintroduction of compulsory national service for all 18-year-olds, and asked for a review of Australia’s membership of the United Nations. She said the government should end foreign aid and spend the money back home, as well as claiming that the government was providing far more money, real estate and opportunities to Aborigines than to tax-paying white Australians. It’s no wonder she caused such a stir.

While Hanson airing her views on public record was a breath of fresh air for those who supported her beliefs but had kept their opinions to themselves for years in fear they would be branded as racist, the woman herself was quick to strongly deny that she was being racist. Instead, she insisted, she was merely being realistic. Pauline Hanson believed she was simply stating the facts.

Of course, everybody has their own opinion on Hanson’s opening speech – and it definitely polarised the country. Though if you were to go through the hundreds of phone calls and faxes that arrived at her office, or you listened to talkback radio as thousands called in, jamming the switchboards, there were a hell of a lot of people who agreed with her. Pauline Hanson looked like becoming a political juggernaut.

One of the reasons for Hanson’s growing popularity was her ability to stand by her beliefs, no matter who she was pitted against – and, thanks to her extreme stance, there was no end of opponents seeking to take her on. Minority groups, politicians, Aboriginal and Asian leaders, and all manner of general do-gooders tended to come off second best against her basic, unswerving redneck logic.

One televised debate between Hanson and Aboriginal leader Charles Perkins – known as a persuasive speaker – saw the studio audience of around 100 average Australians vote 97 per cent to three per cent in favour of Hanson.

After a while, it felt like barely a day went by that some newspaper or current affairs program didn’t run a poll – and they generally showed that two-thirds of average Australians agreed that immigration had gone way too far. It seemed the consensus was that migrants took jobs away from honest, hardworking Australians.

Of course, not everyone was on Team Hanson – far from it. With the death threats growing more regular, she simply changed her address. Indeed, the one person who seemed to have little to say about Australia’s most controversial new politician and her controversial ideas was John Howard. The country’s Asian newspapers were quick to point out the Prime Minister’s indifference to Hanson’s criticism of Asian immigration. They openly questioned why he hadn’t taken a public stand against Hanson’s opinions. The nation’s leader would only say that, while he didn’t necessarily agree with what she said, he believed that if he was to speak out it would only cause further controversy, which would in turn just bring more media attention in her support.

The fact was, John Howard didn’t need to do anything to turn the spotlight on Pauline Hanson – she was just fine doing what she was doing. And what she was doing in April 1997 was forming her own political party, One Nation, with senior adviser David Oldfield and professional fundraiser David Ettridge. Early polls indicated that One Nation had a massive nine per cent of the primary vote, though that pulled back to just above five per cent by September.

Still, support for One Nation was going strong when the Queensland election came around in June 1998. Premier Peter Beattie’s Labor Government may have won by 12 seats, but One Nation secured 22.7 per cent of first preference votes, which landed them 11 seats and put them in second place for another 27. It was a more than impressive debut in the political arena for the fledgling party.

Four months later, it was time for the 1998 federal election. John Howard, of course, came out on top, though One Nation polled a massive 8.43 per cent for almost one million votes. Despite that respectable showing, though, they failed to secure a single seat. Even more of a blow was the fact that Hanson – who had been billing herself as ‘The Mother of the Nation’ throughout the campaign – lost her seat of Oxley. The only thing One Nation had to cheer about in the wash-up was a single seat in the Senate.

When Hanson missed out on a seat in the Queensland Senate at the next federal election on 10 November 2001, she blamed her declining popularity on John Howard, insisting that he stole her policies. Having heard that, many of her now ex-supporters believed that her next career could be in stand-up comedy.

One Nation was up against the wall in the 2001 Queensland election as well, losing eight of its 11 seats. Hanson moved from her beloved Queensland in 2003, relocating to Sydney to have a shot at the NSW Upper House in the election. She lost by just a small margin to John Tingle of the Shooters Party. But 2003 had even worse news in store for Hanson.

On 20 August, Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge were convicted of electoral fraud in Queensland’s District Court. They each received three-year sentences for falsely claiming that 500 members of the Pauline Hanson Support Movement were actually signed up to the political organisation Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. The ruse was done so they could get registered as a political party in Queensland and thus apply for electoral funding.

Because of the charge, the registration was deemed unlawful. That put a serious question mark over the $498,637 of funding Hanson had received. As a result, she received two further convictions for dishonestly obtaining property. She was given a further two three-year sentences, though these would run concurrently with her first sentence.

‘Rubbish, I’m not guilty,’ Hanson responded, adding, ‘It’s a joke.’

Despite her protests, the former fish and chip shop owner was soon sitting in a maximum-security cell. Not that she had too much time to get used to prison life. Both Hanson and Ettridge had their convictions quashed on appeal. They were released in November 2003, after serving just 11 weeks.

In 2007, the Bulletin magazine named Pauline Hanson one of the 100 most influential Australians of all time. That once revered bastion of news reporting – founded in 1880 – folded the following year, three years before Hanson’s stint on Celebrity Apprentice.

Perhaps Pauline Hanson is getting the last laugh, even if it’s not for her political views.