Far right politician back from the dead

Pauline Hanson. Photo / Richard Robinson

Pauline Hanson, the far-right former Queensland politician who fanned Australia's extremist flames before ultimately being consumed by them, has returned.

Now living in New South Wales, the one-time fish-and-chip shop owner will contest a seat in the state's Upper House in the March 26 election, amid a conservative tsunami expected to sweep Labor from power after 16 years.

Hanson has been nominated at the head of a unnamed group of 16 that includes old friends and political allies from the days of One Nation and Pauline's United Australia Party.

While political commentators are already writing off her chances, at least one bookie believes she is in with a shot.

Online bookmaker tomwaterhouse.com is betting A$3 ($4) Hanson wins one of the 21 Legislative Council seats being contested, and A$1.33 that she will fail. Managing director Tom Waterhouse said that while Hanson was an underdog she was "not without a chance".

Her return was immediately greeted with scorn by Premier Kristina Keneally - whose own future looks extremely grim, with the most recent Newspoll tipping a landslide of 62 per cent to 38 per cent for Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell.

"I want to make unequivocally clear that the NSW Labor Party will have no preferences for Ms Hanson," Keneally told Fairfax Radio.

"We absolutely condemn the sorts of racist and discriminatory policies which come from Ms Hanson and parties like One Nation."

The Opposition is also steering clear. "I don't think she's going to be elected and certainly the Liberal Party and the Nationals won't be extending preferences to her," O'Farrell said.

Hanson's new bid is a reversal of her decision last year to quit Australia in disgust and seek "peace and contentment" in Britain, where her grandparents had lived until migrating to Australia early last century.

She decided that the multicultural Australia she had attacked was still the better option after holidaying in Europe last year.

"I love England but so many people want to leave there because it's overrun with immigrants and refugees," she told the Sun-Herald.

Yesterday she told Fairfax Radio she was not racist but that as an Australian she had a right to question immigration and multiculturalism, which she did not believe was helping Australia.

"I believe in people coming here, assimilating, becoming Australians and be proud of this country and abide by the laws of the land," she said.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with that."

Hanson, who said she had returned at the urging of voters, intends running on issues such as parliamentary accountability, law and order, opposition to a carbon tax, and the cost of living.

The number two on her group's ticket, Brian Burston, a former deputy mayor of the Hunter Valley town of Cessnock, was once One Nation's national director, and stood, unsuccessfully, for Hanson's United Australia Party in a previous state election.

Others in the group include Hanson's brother David Seccombe, anti-Muslim campaigner Kate McCulloch - who met Hanson during a campaign last year to block an Islamic school in the southwest Sydney suburb of Camden - former One Nation federal candidate Michael Parsons, and Bev Wallis, an old friend who often has Hanson as a guest in her Sylvania Waters home in Sydney's south.

Hanson's return caps a political career that began with the Ipswich, Queensland, City Council, and her stunning victory in the former blue ribbon Labor seat of Oxley in the 1996 federal election, running as an independent after being dumped by the Liberals.

The following year she founded the One Nation Party, attracting hard right and racist elements and spawning a number of short-lived clones.

One Nation reached its peak in the 1998 Queensland election, winning 11 of the 89 seats in the state parliament's Lower House - but at a cost.

With anger rising against her, she taped a video to be broadcast if she was assassinated, in which she urged Australians: "For the sake of our children and our children's children, you must fight on. Do not let my passing distract you for one moment. We must go forward together as Australians. Our country is at stake."

Failing to win a State Upper House seat in 2003, she was jailed for electoral fraud but released after 11 weeks on appeal.