SYDNEY: Pauline Hanson, the poster girl of Australia’s loony Right, is back on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.
The fish ‘n’ chip shop owner who parlayed homely charms, a good pair of legs, relentless ambition and ultra-conservative orthodoxies into a stellar political career, has just been jailed for three years.
Her crimes were the fraudulent registration of the One Nation Party in 1997 and illegally claiming 500,000 Australian dollars (280,000 US dollars) in campaign funding the following year.
Her response to the court ruling was typical of her approach to politics: “Rubbish. I’m not guilty. It’s a joke,” the 49-year-old spat.
Hanson, whose rise and fall in the political firmament took just six years, was pugnacious to the end.
“I do believe it’s a political witch-hunt,” the carrot-topped rabble-rouser said. “A lot of people don’t have faith in the justice system. I’m fighting the justice system.”
Hanson hammered against much else besides. Special treatment for aborigines, foreign investment, speed limits, immigration from countries where people aren’t mostly white, gun control, overseas aid — were all aspects of modern Australian life she wanted expunged.
Many argue that Hanson, unlettered, untutored and contemptuous of authority, was the author of her own undoing.
She made it to federal parliament in 1996 but didn’t manage to leverage that surprise breakthrough into a political platform that was credible on more than a few hot-button issues.
Famously, she proposed a flat 10 per cent tax on everything — a policy initiative greeted with hoots of derision from almost everyone.
Others claim that Hanson, who snared almost a quarter of the vote in the Queensland state election in 1998 and almost nine per cent of the vote in the general election later that year, was let down by her supporters.
After she lost her seat in parliament One Nation began to subside beneath her. It proved to be a grassroots organisation run by greenhorns.
Hanson, as she herself admitted, was also undermined by Prime Minister John Howard’s conservative coalition government. They stole her thunder by stealing her policies.—dpa