Pauline Hanson's rise to fame or notoriety was guided by the hand of fate. It had nothing to do with political skill and indeed flourished on the accidents of others. Three people played a vital role in lifting her into the public limelight and the stage that she was to strut for three short or long years, depending on your point of view. They were Labor Councillor Paul Tully, ex Papua New Guinean politician John Pasquerelli and myself ...in that order.
Hanson having been a casualty of the Hilmer Report and National Competition policy that saw local councils created into large autocratic governments, was persuaded to try her hand at Federal politics. Even this turn of events was instigated by her very loyal friend, who had earlier helped in her campaign to enter local politics. Maurie Marsden, close enough to Hanson to wear her heart on his sleeve, persuaded her to join the local Liberal Party Branch of Bremner. This slotted in with the Hanson ethos for self-reliance. As a small business woman much of the Liberal Party philosophy, would have found a sympathetic chord in this young woman, floundering to find her niche.
Having joined the branch in 1995 Hanson showed little interest in setting definitive goals. When the Queensland State elections loomed Hanson toyed with the idea of standing. Once again her 'rock of Gibraltar' Maurie Marsden, persuaded her to give the idea away. Marsden may well have been very fond of her, but he obviously mixed a great deal of political nous, born of the feel for politics, with his feelings.
When Hanson, now with an appetite born of her stint in local council, discussed with Marsden the possibility of running for Parliament he suggested that she might put up for pre-selection for the forth-coming Federal election. He must have gilded the lily too for he convinced her that she could win the seat of Oxley. Not only was Oxley a blue ribbon seat for the Australian Labor Party, but it was also the Governor General Bill Hayden's old stamping ground. Yet even before this ambition could be realised Hanson had to go to preselection.
Hanson acquitted herself well enough in the process and was duly nominated as the Liberal Party candidate. But Oxley was no great shakes for a lady with ambition. Marsden may have been a great fill-up for her psychologically, but she was never going to wrest Oxley from Labor. Les Scott may not have been every Labor supporters dream member, but he was one of them'.
Hanson, with the stalwart Marsden at her side did what every aspiring parliamentarian does in seeking public endorsement ...she went out and talked with the people. She had fliers printed and with a few willing supporters had them distributed. Anyone who has travelled this path, knows that it can be a hard and often a dispiriting task. Even so Hanson had the backing of her Liberal Party. Not that that was any great advantage. John Bradford, the then sitting member for McPherson, tutored her. I knew him well enough and when I came out publicly and supported her, we had occasion to have contact. He spoke well of her but agreed that she was never expected to do more than carry Liberal Party colours. It was the sort of opportunity given to aspiring candidates ...simply to blood them. In short Hanson was on a hiding to nothing.
It was then she unwittingly lit a delayed action time bomb. In doing so she was to alter not only the lives of many people, but also to send shock waves through the whole political system. Hanson wrote a letter to the local newspaper The Queensland Times. Ironically she had Robert Tickner in her sights. Her theme was essentially that of equality for all Australians and not the selective kind that Labor fostered for the Aborigines. John Pasquarelli in his colourful account of Hanson, by the Man who Knows, says that the letter was 'clumsily constructed and innocuous enough.'
This is an interesting comment. The letter is pure Hanson. She is no speech writer, no academic. You read this letter and you then realise that her maiden speech, with a couple of exceptions is written in similar vein. This was Hanson before Pasquarelli's arrival. Yet Pasquarelli's comment is dismissive ...the suggestion one suspects is that in his hands he would have dealt more professionally with the topic, if indeed he had even attempted to do so. This tends very much to underline what I said at the time that Pasquarelli tried to inflict his views upon her. I suspect that Pasquarelli as indeed Oldfield did later, believed that they were intellectually superior. If that was their perception of her and one suspects that it was little else, then they underestimated her.
The letter may have gone unnoticed, it may have been Hanson's first foray into letter writing and it may have missed it's mark among the newspapers readers, but one man saw the opportunity to belittle the aspiring politician. His name was Paul Tully, a Labor councillor. In seeking to embarrass Hanson, not on the merits or otherwise of what she had said, but as a way of having a swipe at her, he unwittingly gave her a ticket to her ambition. His animated attack on what she had said, provided fuel to the scribblers employed on the Courier-Mail. They suitably gave the topic enough 'press' to ensure that the Hanson woman...the racist, by the journalistic ethos that decrees that any criticism of Aborigines irrespective of the validity of the argument is by association automatically racist ...became an embarrassment to the Liberal Party. It did. Given John Howard's much vaunted claim of giving everybody a fair go, he immediately dumped Hanson. This champion of everything that is honest and fair, proved that when it comes to pragmatism in politics, that 'little Johnny' could dump equally on his principles. After all, this was the man who come hell or high-water was going to be Prime Minister. Twenty years of believing that he was God's gift to Australian politics was not going to be torpedoed by a fiery redhead.
Initially Cr Tully may well have been very pleased that the Liberal Party responded as it did, by disenfranchising her. As he had done in council, so too did he try to destroy Hanson in her new direction in public life. Why?
But fate was to play another hand. Too late to alter the ballot papers that had Hanson as the endorsed Liberal candidate, she decided in her determined manner ...that was to become a hallmark trait ...to run as an Independent. This single act of sheer defiance in the face of the autocratic party machine, sent sympathy waves across the electorate of Oxley. Suddenly the issues were forgotten. This provocative letter writer, had taken on the might of everything that the average person saw as obnoxious about the system. Hanson now took on the role of a crusader ...the battle of David and Goliath. Suddenly Marsden's dream of Pauline Hanson becoming the member for Oxley began to come into focus.
With the Federal Labor Party carrying the odour of the politically aborted Eastern Motorway out of Brisbane with the perceived unjustness of the Hanson disendorsement that painted the Howard mob as ogres with the confusion at the ballot-box over who was representing who ...Pauline Hanson romped home. In a massive 23% swing she hit the headlines across the nation.
This was the girl ...dumb, according to her closest advisers, who tilted at Robert Tickner, the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Affairs, by writing an innocuous letter. It was the catalyst that derailed Tully's effort to destroy her and caused massive headaches to those who disowned her simply because it might damage their electoral aspirations.
Hanson's targeting of Tickner was all the more credible because two others in Graeme Campbell, in the West and Bob Katter, in the North who along with Hanson mirrored similar views obtained the similar electoral success. The Aboriginal ethos had gone too far ...the reason why Robert Tickner, suffered the inverse of their massive swings.
The hand of fate had delivered to the battlers of Australia this champion of the people. The question was ...could she or would she be allowed to deliver.