When candidates threw their lot in with One Nation for the Queensland elections, one man called around to see me, his name was Terry Sharples. Sharples was unknown to me but he was sent around to see me because he had just done a deal with Paul Trewartha.
Sharples who ran for the seat of Burleigh set out as an Independent. He called to see Trewartha with a view to swapping preferences with the ONE NATION candidate. The trouble was that there was no ONE NATION candidate. Trewartha suggested that Sharples might consider coming aboard. Sharples called on me to ask my opinion. I told him to be careful and said I thought he could not be trusted. Sharples ignored my advice and went ahead and paid over $1,200. Three days out from the election there was a row of sorts over preferences. Sharples had his own ideas and Oldfield had his. Trewartha tried to calm the waters, but failed. Sharples clashed with Oldfield on the Thursday and words were exchanged. On the evening before the day of the election Trewartha told Sharples that he had been disendorsed. What Trewartha did not do at that point was return the money that Sharples had shelled out to ONE NATION. That simple omission triggered the deregistration of One Nation in two States
I know that Sharples approached both Hanson and Hill about this, but in the event he had to take legal action to recover the money.
Having embarked on this course of action Sharples an accountant by profession began looking at other aspects of the ONE NATION organisation and was not happy with what he was seeing. As a result of this he decided to test the legality of the political party in court.
It was at a point that other people began to appear. Sharples informed me that what he was doing was now creating interest from outside quarters. In a casual remark he said that some heavies in the form of security were coming in from Western Australia, to 'tail him'. I pricked my ears up at this and asked him did the name John Samuels ring a bell. He told me it did not and I had no reason to disbelieve him. The following day he called and said that this man had rung him and was coming to the Gold Coast to see him. This time I was surprised. This was when Sharples decided to play a cloak and dagger game. Over the next day or so Samuels met with Hazelton, then Sharples at West Burleigh. What was discussed I have no idea and Sharples had been sworn to secrecy by Samuels. A couple of days later Samuels flew into Coolangatta and although Sharples had told me that he would see that I got to meet him, he went alone to the airport and they spoke briefly between flights. What these discussions were about I really don't have a great idea. What I do know is that Sharples had to find funding to support his case against ONE NATION. He ran into deadline and was sent to a solicitor in Brisbane. That night he called at my home telling me that he had a Paul Everingham acting for him as I understood it, pro bono.
"You bloody fool, don't you realise what has happened."
"No what?' Sharples replied a little taken back.
"These bastards are using you to nail ONE NATION, they're setting you up. Tell me do you know who Tony Abbott is?"
'Not particularly, why?'
"Oh forget it." I said.
Sharples went to Brisbane the following day and saw Everingham again. That night he rang me on his mobile whilst coming home on the train.
"Kay (Terry's wife) tells me there is a message on the answering machine from ...wait for it, ...Tony Abbott."
What happened next is a book in itself. As a layman I have been absolutely disgusted how men who administer the law in the name of justice can purport to be any better than some of the criminals they defend. I have come to the conclusion that the only difference between common criminals and a great many lawyers and politicians, is a matter of degree, a University degree. What I have seen in the trials and tribulations of Terry Sharples, gives me great concern for how justice and more importantly the pursuit of truth is raped in a cacophony of legal niceties, positioning and down-right bastardry. I have sighted an undertaking by a member of the Howard government to underpin Sharples in his fight against ONE NATION, I have seen that undertaking withdrawn when Sharples challenged the system to play the game of truth instead of manipulating the law to procure a given result, I have seen that money deflected to underpin another Hanson dissident who was also taking ONE NATION to court and when the same member of parliament became a cabinet minister and the threat of ONE NATION had abated, that case was withdrawn. The word stench comes to mind but what the public never get to hear is how those who hold onto the principle of truth are left dying and bleeding. I see the justice system as a tearaway horse dragging the martyr of truth behind it, never stopping until the battered body has taken its last breath. The truth is vanquished in the name of justice and the lords and Whigs feast and wine on the booty of filthy lucre! Colourful, not really ...just call it growing perception! It sits well alongside other controversial issues like Asians and Aborigines. The law maybe an ass, but it's fraternity is a wealthy and devious ass.
And then there is the booty at the end. I saw enough to make me sick. In the end this man Terry Sharples, who for me exemplifies the battler, was hit by the lot. In the end he finished up as he started defending himself. If oil is the lubrication of machinery, then money is the lubrication of barristers and Q.C's. If that is seen as offensive and that is not to imply that all operate the same then it should concern those who place integrity and honesty as the foundations of equal justice.
In the final analysis ONE NATION and Terry Sharples don't matter. When they have been financially stripped of their funds and resources, their lawyers will move on but in the process people will be chewed up and spat out, and the game of politics will be settled in the leather covered lounges and cigar filled corridors of power.
Recently I was slated over the Internet for helping bring about the demise of One Nation. It was claimed that in helping Terry Sharples that I provided him with the material to bring that about.
I don't particularly have much time for Sharples and whilst he would I am sure be the first to claim that he and he alone had single-handedly slayed the beast, it simply is not true. Terry Sharples spent many hours in my home, pouring over the sort of material that enabled him to 'nail' One Nation. He was a man who was always short of money and as a result his zealous perusal of One Nation was a cost to me.
I admired the way that Sharples never gave up. He received some pretty rough treatment by certain politicians, from lawyers, from friends and in the end disappeared. He and Hanson, in that respect had much in common.
Sharples and I fell out in the end. It all happened over an affidavit that I sent to his stalwart friend in Currumbin. This friend thought as I did that it served the purpose, but Terry insisted putting his own spin on the statement. One page became four. It was not me and I was having no part of fashioning a statement to influence the Court. I refused to sign it. Out of desperation Sharples came to my house with a Justice of the Peace in tow, en-route to Brisbane and the Supreme Court. In spite of sympathetic backing for Sharples from my wife I remained resolute. I refused to sign it. Sharples then made some stupid remarks about my hostility and alluded to the fact that he had a witness, the JP, to back him up.
What Sharples never appreciated was that if I had signed that affidavit and had I been challenged in the Court as to its authenticity, I would have to have committed perjury to protect him. That he was prepared to sacrifice a friend for his own purposes did not impress me. Had I been faced with this challenge in the Court I would have denied being its author, thereby placing Sharples in the position of having attempted to mislead. Not only that but I could have been charge with co-operation.
I lost a good friend over this, not Sharples but the man who received the fax of the original statement.
Sharples finally saw the Appeal Court upheld the decision of Justice Atkinson. As a result One Nation ceased to be a recognised political entity in the Queensland Parliament.
I take nothing away from Terry he did a marvellous job. That I provided material critical to his case, I do not deny. I had no sense of betrayal to Hanson, because to me One Nation was all about Ettridge and Oldfield.
When David Oldfield boasted that One Nation was never in fear of deregistration in New South Wales, because he had never been involved with this State, I saw red. John Wasson the New South Wales Electoral Commissioner received from me a whole wad of documentation that proved otherwise.
When the party was subsequently deregistered in that State too, I was absolutely delighted.
Terry, like myself, fell over backwards to avoid the action he ultimately took. Hanson brushed him off as though he was irrelevant and has paid the price.
As recently as June 2000 I wrote to Pauline. I pointed out that I remained her best supporter. Pauline has never acknowledged that a mere non-de-script on the Gold Coast had helped lift her to national prominence and had provided a good enough support base to steal, plunder and use for the launching of a new party.
Constantly I had written to her appealing for her to rid herself of One Nation and the destructive baggage that it carried. I had gone on National television extolling the same sentiments ...all to no avail.
Well Pauline dismissed me by the simple act of ignoring all those pleas to come to her senses. She thought that I would simply go away, just as she thought Sharples would. Well let me tell Pauline Hanson that she was the architect of the One Nation demise. Whilst I never believed in the One Nation concept, I always retained the cold clinical remarks of its chief architect David Oldfield; 'You were never going to be allowed to remain in the movement.(PHSM) You would have stood in the way of our agenda. We are going to destroy you."
Perhaps Pauline may have stopped for a moment to realise that if someone had the ability to create a movement for good, they might just have had enough also to help bring it down. Pauline Hanson could still rise from the ashes, but she will never do it with One Nation in her saddlebags. Whether she can extricate herself from the mess that she is in now is problematical. All I know is that I have done my best for her. As I write word has come through that she has axed another of her people State President Alan Doak At the same time a story gathering credence is that she is about to disown Senator Len Harris.
If these rumours are right then we must come to the irrefutable conclusion that HANSON has lost it! Nobody in their right mind can accept that we are all disloyal and therefore traitors. There are now far too many fallen victims of the Hanson following for us all to be wrong. Hanson must now accept that she is patently politically immature and nothing more than an empty vessel How very sad, how bitterly disappointing.