Pauline Hanson jailed for 3 years

By GREG ANSLEY Australia correspondent

CANBERRA - Pauline Hanson, the flame-haired founder of the far-right One Nation Party whose racism and xenophobia rocked Australian politics, was jailed for three years after being found guilty yesterday of electoral fraud.

Her co-founder and former party director, David Ettridge, was also found guilty of fraud and jailed for three years.

The pair created a political machine that harnessed the nation's dark side, drawing to it struggling farmers, rural poor, gun activists, racists and others fearing a collapse of Australian wealth and values.

Hanson, 49, said from the dock that the jury's verdict was "rubbish ... a joke".

"I'm still very innocent of the charges and I believe the prosecution has not proven the case against me or David Ettridge."

Hanson had maintained in the run-up to the trial that the charges were a conspiracy by the political establishment to silence her and crush One Nation, at one stage even preparing a video-taped message to be played in case of her assassination.

Ettridge, 58, who, with now bitter enemy David Oldfield, was Hanson's most influential and intimate adviser and who represented himself at the trial, said after the verdict: "I still maintain my innocence."

The charges of electoral fraud date back to the party's glory days, when it was rolling through regional Australia and threatening to break heavily across Queensland and federal politics.

The pair registered One Nation in Queensland using more than 500 names drawn from a list of Hanson supporters to qualify as a political party under the state's electoral law. But they fraudulently declared the supporters as party members.

Hanson was further found guilty of dishonestly obtaining almost A$500,000 ($567,000) in electoral reimbursements after the 1998 state elections and sentenced to a concurrent term of three years.

Hanson tearfully embraced her two sons and Ettridge as they were led away.

Chief Justice Patsy Wolfe made no recommendation for parole, and said the pair had undermined public confidence in the political process.

Yesterday's decision ends a career that flared dramatically - if briefly - after the Liberals dropped her as their candidate for the Queensland seat of Oxley in 1996.

Hanson won the seat as an independent, rocking the country with her maiden speech by declaring Australia was in danger of being swamped by Asians and dividing the nation between those who passionately supported her and the majority who, equally passionately, opposed her.