Pauline Hanson

Who is Pauline Hanson?

Pauline Lee Hanson is an Australian politician and former leader of One Nation, a right-wing political party with a populist, conservative and anti-multiculturalism platform. In 2006, she was named by The Bulletin as one of the 100 most influential Australians of all time.

Hanson was a City of Ipswich councillor in the mid-1990s. Following her disendorsement as the Liberal Party candidate for the federal seat of Oxley for the March 1996 election, she was elected as the independent member in that election. Her profile increased dramatically later that year when she gave her maiden parliamentary speech in which she criticised immigration and multiculturalism, government assistance to Aboriginals and political correctness, and called for a return to high-tariff protectionism.

She co-founded One Nation in 1997, but lost her seat at the 1998 election and subsequently has made several unsuccessful attempts to be re-elected to both federal and state parliaments in Australia.