Now we feel sorry for her!

G’Day. There’s always another sensational twist in the Pauline Hanson story, isn’t there? And our feelings about her and what she meant for us keep changing too. Heaps of reaction today from Webdiarists, overwhelmingly of the view that the sentence stinks. And this on a leftie-dominated site. Crazy. My first take is Mother of the nation in jail, its father in charge. I’ll have a go at a more considered assessment of her legacy tomorrow. The Hanson support group’s take is at paulinehanson.

Tonight your first reaction, but first, some links to Hanson Webdiaries for a blast from the past in this most complicated relationship between the red head and the Australian people.

Hansonism: Then and Now, November 9, 2000

Pauline Hanson rises from the grave, February 5, 2001

Behind Pauline’s comeback, February 12, 2001

Pauline’s mob pumps out the Sunburnt Battler, February 13, 2001

One Nation and chaos theory, February 14, 2001

The blame game, February 16, 2001

Howard prefers Hanson?, February 19, 2001

Hanson and you, February 15, 2001

Retrospective Hansonism,September 26, 2001

Beyond Hanson, January 14, 2002

Fundamental inexperience, January 15, 2002

Hanson’s legacy, January 16, 2002

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THE GUARDIAN’S TAKE

Australian icon of far right jailed for fraud

by David Fickling in Sydney, Thursday August 21, 2003

Pauline Hanson, the founder of Australia’s xenophobic One Nation party, who was once seen as a potential prime minister, was sent to prison for fraud yesterday.

“It’s a joke”, she shouted as she was jailed for three years on three charges of electoral fraud. After hugging her family and her co-accused and fellow One Nation founder David Ettridge, who received the same sentence, she was led away to the cells.

Hanson has seen her career nosedive and the party she led is in tatters.

One Nation has a single federal senator and four state MPs in Queensland and Western Australia. But without the fraud for which she was convicted yesterday it might not have existed at all.

The court ruled that 500 signatures used as proof of One Nation’s membership base in 1997 had belonged to an unofficial Hanson support group.

Funding of $500,000 (then worth about 175,000) from Queensland state, with which One Nation’s campaigned for its breakthrough election in 1998, was also obtained by fraud.

The Queensland premier, Peter Beattie, said last night that a sympathy vote could cause a temporary resurgence of One Nation support: a view endorsed by many of the party’s supporters.

“The sentence is bloody outrageous,” said Bill Flynn, One Nation MP for the Queensland seat of Lockyer. “We have murderers who go to jail for less. If any good can come out of this I would say to her, ‘Chin up, girl. They can make a mar tyr out of you but it will come back to bite them in the bum’.”

Hanson first appeared on the political scene with a shock victory in the suburban Brisbane seat of Oxley in 1996.

Initially endorsed by the rightwing Liberal party, she was removed from its slate when her views on Asian immigration and Aboriginal rights became known.

Her policies, which she described as “… a fair go for all Australians”, included slashing health, education and housing aid for impoverished Aborigines. She said Asian immigrants were synonymous with crime and disease, and that immigration should stop until unemployment reached nil.

The Liberals deselected her because of the fear that her extreme views would help Labor.

Their mistake became apparent when she was elected to Canberra on a 23% swing. Since then, it has been the ruling Liberal-National coalition, rather than Labor, which has benefited most from her views.

At One Nation’s high-water mark during the 1998 Queensland state elections, one in four people backed the party.

A few months later it polled 8% in the federal elections, equivalent to 1m votes, but the success was marred by Hanson losing her own Oxley seat, and decline soon followed.

David Oldfield, another of its founders, denied that the verdict posed a threat to One Nation’s existence. “I think there’s plenty of signs the party is in trouble, but it’s had greater troubles than Pauline Hanson going to jail,” he said.

“The greatest troubles have been arguments within One Nation itself, many of them caused by her.”

Hanson stood this year as an independent for a Sydney seat in the New South Wales state election, but lost to a gun-ownership lobby.

Despite her disappearance from parliament, her impact on Australian politics has remained dramatic. “She transformed the political landscape,” Margo Kingston, her biographer, said.

“She started off as a profound risk to the conservative side of politics, but when [prime minister] John Howard broke the bipartisan policy on refugees during the Tampa [immigrant boat] crisis, that was completely turned around. From that moment One Nation support ended, its support went to John Howard, politics was shifted to the right and Labor was dragged along with it.”

Hanson always insisted that Howard had simply stolen her policies on Aboriginal rights and immigration. “It’s ironic,” said Ms Kingston. “The woman who started all this is in jail and the man who took her policies is prime minister.”

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Ben Kennedy

You say in The Guardian: “She started off as a profound risk to the conservative side of politics, but when [prime minister] John Howard broke the bipartisan policy on refugees during the Tampa [immigrant boat] crisis, that was completely turned around. From that moment One Nation support ended, its support went to John Howard, politics was shifted to the right and Labor was dragged along with it.”

I don’t know if this is true Margo. Pauline was a risk to the Conservative side of politics, but I don’t know if it was “profound”. In the UK the Coalition would have been dead ducks under first-past-the-post, but in Australia the major parties can always appeal for minor party preferences; afterall, a minor party or independent voter’s second preference is just as deadly as their first once their preferred candidate has been eliminated.

Being a regular reader of your work, I know that like many other commentators you also conveniently ignore that fact that it was the ALP between 1989-1994 that established the architecture of the system for dealing with refugees and unlawful entrants, which included the introduction of the much-maligned but highly popular and effective policy of “mandatory detention”. I don’t recall you criticising Labor back then – remember that Cambodian person who was stuffed into a body bag and dragged kicking and screaming onto an airplane? That was during Keating’s watch; Margo Kingston apparently had no moral qualms about refugee policy back then. (Margo: Dead wrong Ben. I was a trenchant and persistent critic of Labor’s boat people policy, working on it almost full time for the Canberra Times, where I then worked.)

At the same time you criticise others for not taking a principled stand against the death penalty – flailing them for turning their morality on and off like a switch – you seem to be forgetting your own hypocrisy. (Margo: Please advise the basis for your charge of hypocrisy.)

As for John Howard breaking bipartisan policy on refugees – am I suffering from serious brain damage or do I distinctly recall Kim Beazley explicitly saying in parliament during the Tampa crisis that: “On this issue the government and opposition are as one.” Perhaps you recall Bob Brown’s colourful opposition to Mr Howard’s actions. Bob doesn’t have an official party though Margo, at least not in parliament. (Margo: Howard broke the old biparrtisanship, Beazley joined Howard in the new one.)

I acknowledge that Mr Howard used One Nation-like ideas about turning refugee boats around (which was, in fact, one of One Nation’s better proposals) to fashion a legislative response to the issues raised by the Tampa affair – however the parliament, rather than the Howard government, established this arrangement – an important difference.

I know you will most probably ignore this email, but would you like to have a go at justifying any of the claims you have made above? (Margo: Why would you assume that? I’ve make a point of publishing articulate criticism of my work since I started Webdiary three years ago.)

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Sean Hocking

I heard you on radio this morning, and for once I have to disagree with you. I think a jail sentence is completely appropriate, if only because she allowed Howard to steal her ideas!

She started a party that talked about exclusion, thinly veiled racism and worst of all allowed her ideas to be hijacked by the Liberal Party. She then played politics and the media game to the hilt and has come undone in the process.

I don’t worry about the martyr argument. Whether she went to jail or not she and her supporters will always paint her as a martyr.

My only hope that by some miracle Howard will one day end up in front of the same judge, but then again I live in fantasy land.

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Helen Darville

I’ve always been of the view that you understood the whole ‘Pauline Hanson phenomenon’ better than any journalist in Australia. Your piece today only confirms that view. It seems we will have to pay for all the things we thought were true of Australia but turned out to be myth. And pay. And pay. And pay. Maybe our grandchildren will be free of the debt.

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Martin Davies, Webdiary’s artist:

Ms Hanson’s conviction is certainly going to send a chill up the spine of politicians who think deceiving the public is in their interest. Liars and con men beware – the courts will send you to jail. Sure.

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Denise Parkinson

Great article today on Howard and Hanson. You have articulated what a good number of people in this country would be thinking and feeling right now.

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Krista Gerrard

Loved Off the rails. Do you think a Lib or ALP pollie would have ever got to prosecution on the same facts or would a deal have been struck early on? (the former). Do you know if Pauline was offered any deals, with respect to her charges, or did she fight on in an attempt to prove her innocence? (No, but my bet is she wasn’t.) Do you still think she is mostly narrow minded and stupid, rather than a force of evil or bad? (Yes. The evil is elsewhere.)

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Gary Fallon

First we had Howard, then we had Tuckey and now Hanson goes to prison. All politicians. All lied.

The raving right are asking for a referendum on the death penalty. Howard wants to change the Constitution to weaken the Senate.

I’d like to see a referendum put to the Australian people that would change the Constitution to require any Minister of the Crown accused of misleading Parliament face the High Court to answer the charges and if found guilty to be expelled from Parliament and forfeit all of his/her superannuation entitlements.

The most interesting part would be the ‘No’ case that Howard would inevitably put forward!

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Russell Dovey

You know, I hate to say this, but jailing someone for three years because they didn’t do their paperwork correctly is a bit harsh, in my opinion. We all know that it’s David Oldfield who manipulated these two, rode them to power, then dropped them like a hot turd. He’s still sitting in the NSW senate, collecting his paycheck and pushing his racism.

Hell, John Howard is an even better example. He not only blessed Hanson through faint lack of praise, but his Coalition stole her racist policies to woo her racist supporters.

Hanson gets three years in prison for being too stupid to understand the difference between a political party and a support movement, and Howard gets three years (and counting) in Kiribili House for giving racists permission to spread hatred. This is not justice.

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Harry Cole in Drummoyne, Sydney

What happened to Hanson today proved beyond doubt that what we have in Australia is a sham democracy. A sham democracy within which any ordinary person who articulates political opinion, and tries to organise some kind of grassroots movement outside of the approved organisations, is ridiculed, demonised and finally jailed.

Oh sure, it wasn’t done overtly – but don’t take the Australian public for total fools. To be quite honest, I could not stand the ghastly woman. I thought she was reactionary and divisive. But that is not the point. The point is that if you are denied, by whatever means, the right to organise politically and challenge the way your country is being run, then what you have is something other than democracy. That being the case, all you political journalists, analysts, editors and soothsayers might as well pack it in and go home, after all what use is a parliament and its hangers on without democracy?

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Tony Lane

Since I’ve always been an anti-Hansonite my first reaction to her jailing was **YES** but on reflection it looks totally disproportionate. Without knowing the details of the case, it looks more like she was guilty of gung-ho naivety than fraud. Community service would have been my option if I was the judge. Ettridge may well be another matter – I’ve always felt he was a cynical hanger on.

Your article points out some of the more complex truths behind the current scene. Do you really feel Australia is sliding into fascism? I ask not because I disagree, but because I have felt so alone and old-fashioned holding this viewpoint myself! Anyway, keep on stirring – there are some of us listening and puzzling out what to do.

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Peter Woodforde in Canberra

Anyone would think she was an “illegal” except for the fact that she actually got an open trial. And she’ll never see the inside of one of Howard’s wicked hell-holes in Nauru or Baxter. Her sentence is nonetheless unduly harsh and rather stupidly unimaginative, as well as completely out of kilter with community expectations.

It’s a bit hard to write about Pauline Hanson the day after the murders of Sergio di Mello and his colleagues. On any count, he had more good in one of his finger nails than there would be in a whole exercise yard full of Pauline Hansons (let alone John Howards). But her long harsh sentence is cockeyed, as is Peter Beattie’s very disappointing and uncharacteristically maladroit response.

Beattie was right, however, to say that many will see Hanson as a martyr. I seriously doubt that it will cause too much of a resurgence of One Nation, but there will be many, many people in Australia today – from across the political spectrum – saying the sentence was unfair. They will resent it and further despise “them” who inflicted it. And they won’t have anywhere to go – the alienated never do. So the national political process is further poisoned. The expression of this almost certainly won’t be particularly political, but we’ll all feel it.

Out in the suburbs, people will remember that a reckless drunk got a similar (but suspended) sentence for killing a cousin or workmate with a motor car. They will know people who were bashed and robbed, and saw the perpetrators cop six months. They will remember that the kids who burgled and vandalised their home never even got caught. They’ll recall the battalions of heavy-jowled captains of industry who stole millions and walked.

And they will have uneasy feelings about close-to-the-wind political shenanigans in the moonlight sate and all the other rotten boroughs, too.

Peter Beattie was perfectly entitled to say that there was no political direction of the Hanson trial and that it was entirely and properly in the hands of the judiciary. Perhaps with an appeal looming, he was also entitled to stay his hand on much comment, anyway.

But at some stage, he might need to say the obvious – that the sentence is over the top and out of kilter with community expectations. It defies the principle of a fair go.

Bob Carr does it, although only when the convicts get too little, and they are from an unfashionable ethnic group. Ironically, Carr’s actions are part of the post-Hanson mood which grips huge chunks of the community.

People won’t forget the perils of Pauline, and the outcomes may bubble unpleasantly for years to come.

Meanwhile, our heroine is banged up with a new constituency (including a former Queensland Chief Magistrate). She’s probably already boning up on the biography of Nelson Mandela. Perhaps she’ll right a book to follow up “Off the Rails” – “My Struggle.”

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Lyn Freeman

I read your piece on Pauline Hanson and agree entirely with everything you said. The double standards in this country leave me speechless – mainly because I don’t have the guts to speak out.

I don’t like One Nation politics but I admire any show of Democracy in action and she did that, as it was her right to do. This charge and sentence stinks of ‘witchunting’ to me! She is another one to be burned at the political stake, who else? Carmen, Roz, Cheryl and Natasha barely escaped, who else has been there? The dark forces certainly do ‘kill’ all our women politicians.

I just hope there is enough of a backlash against Pauline’s sentence and the trumped up ‘fraud’ conviction to slap Howard and the rest of the elites square on the jaw. But I’m dreaming I know he is untouchable now!

I will be voting Green in the next election all the way, just as my only way of protest.

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