Pauline Hanson - Declining Popularity

Declining Popularity

In 1999, The Australian reported that support for One Nation had fallen from 22% to 5%. One Nation Senate candidate Lenny Spencer blamed the press together with party director David Oldfield for the October 1998 election defeat, while the media reported the redirecting of preferences away from One Nation as the primary reason, with a lack of party unity, poor policy choices and an "inability to work with the media" also responsible.

Hanson lost her seat in Parliament after an electoral redistribution essentially split Oxley in half before the 1998 election. The bulk of her support was drawn into the newly created Division of Blair. The new seat was drawn as a very safe Liberal seat, with a notional majority of 18.7 percent. Hanson opted to contest Blair and won 36% of the primary vote, slightly over 10% more than her nearest rival. However, preferences were enough to elect the Liberal Party candidate, Cameron Thompson. Nationally, One Nation gained 8.99% of the Senate vote and 8.4% of the Representatives vote, but only one MP was elected – Len Harris as a Senator for Queensland. Heather Hill had originally been elected to this position, but the High Court of Australia ruled that, although she was an Australian citizen, she was ineligible for election to sit as a Senator since she had not renounced her British citizenship, which the Court assumed she possessed because she had been born in Britain. Hanson alleged in her 2007 autobiography Pauline Hanson: Untamed & Unashamed that a number of other politicians had dual citizenship yet this did not prevent them from holding positions in Parliament.

At the next Federal election on 10 November 2001, Hanson ran for a Queensland Senate seat but narrowly failed. She has accounted for her declining popularity by blaming Prime Minister John Howard for stealing her policies.

"It has been widely recognised by all, including the media, that John Howard sailed home on One Nation policies. In short, if we were not around, John Howard would not have made the decisions he did."

Other interrelated factors that have contributed to her downfall include her connection with a series of advisors (John Pasquarelli, David Ettridge and David Oldfield), all of whom she has fallen out with; disputes amongst her supporters and a lawsuit over the organisational structure of One Nation.

Hanson claimed in 2003 to have been vilified over campaign funding.

In 2003 she left Queensland, moved to Sylvania Waters, Sydney in New South Wales (NSW) and stood for the NSW Upper House in the 22 March State election. She lost narrowly to Shooters Party candidate John Tingle.

Hanson had also assisted Australian country musician Brian Letton in making a record with Tommy Tecko. In 2006, she commenced a new career selling real estate in Queensland.

She has been parodied and impersonated by drag queen Pauline Pantsdown, who sampled snippets from Hanson's speeches to create a song called "I'm a Backdoor Man". After Hanson successfully pursued legal action against Pantsdown, Pantsdown used the same technique to create the track "I Don't Like It", a 1998 Top 10 single in Australia.

After a civil suit in 1999 that reached the Queensland Court of Appeal in 2000, involving disgruntled former One Nation member Tony Sharples and a finding of fraud when registering One Nation as a political party, Hanson was facing bankruptcy. She made an appeal to supporters to give money to help her through her hard times. Shaun Nelson, formerly a One Nation member of the Queensland parliament, attacked Hanson: "She can afford to live on a $700,000 mansion just outside of Rosewood. The people up here that she's asking to give money to are pensioners and farmers that are doing it tough." Hanson, however, claimed she considered selling her home.