The perils of Pauline on the rocky road to the polls

A family broadside may be the salvo that will sink the poll hopes of Pauline Hanson, the right-wing Australian politician. Robert Milliken reports

IT HAS been a tough week for Pauline Hanson. The populist politician who wants to make an impact in this week's Australia's general election with her demands to stop Asian immigration and welfare spending on aborigines has stumbled. Her support has fallen in opinion polls, and she is struggling to win her own seat. Then came a devastating rebuke from Steven Hanson, her 23-year-old son, who dismissed Mrs Hanson's claim to be "the mother of all Australians" saying: "I can't remember the last time she spoke to me."

Her son's broadside came in an interview in New Idea, the same mass-circulation magazine that published an interview three months ago with Mark Hanson, Pauline's former husband, who said he wished he had never met her. The withering remarks from her son were possibly the last straw for Pauline Hanson, the woman who came from nowhere when she entered parliament three years ago and has since caused havoc among Australia's political establishment.

Steven Hanson, a Sydney chef, told the magazine he was suffering from a serious illness, which he did not specify, that he may not live to the age of 30 and that "I don't expect her to support me through this." He said: "I'm disappointed that she doesn't have a broader view of life, and some of the things she says make me cringe. I have a lot of overseas friends and a lot of gay friends. In many ways, her staunch views have made me the liberal-thinking person I am. I know she thinks she's doing the best thing for Australia, but maybe she should do more research before making some of her comments." But Mrs Hanson continued on a whistle-stop campaign through the populous eastern states of Australia where the election on 3 October is likely to be decided. In Tasmania, she said aborigines were "a lot happier" in bygone days when they worked for no money on outback cattle properties in return for white farmers "paying" them in food and clothing. In Sydney on Thursday, a press conference at which she announced her health policy fell into disarray when she refused to answer journalists' questions about her call to abolish public spending on aboriginal health schemes.

Getting close to Pauline Hanson is a challenge. She is accompanied wherever she goes by David Oldfield, her honey-voiced strategist, minder, friend and confidant. Mr Oldfield, a former diver and Sydney local council member, has helped to transform the unknown fish-and-chip shop owner from Queensland into a national figure.

Mrs Hanson is running in next Saturday's federal election for the Queensland constituency of Blair, named, ironically, after Harold Blair, a famous aboriginal singer. But opposing candidates from the mainstream parties, Liberal, National and Labor, have agreed to place her last in the voting order under Australia's preferential system. Election number-crunchers believe this will make it very hard for her to win, and she has conceded she may lose. If so, where would that leave Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party? Perhaps in Mr Oldfield's hands. He is also standing in the election, not for the lower house like Pauline, but as a candidate in New South Wales for the Senate, the upper federal house, where voting is on a state- wide rather than a seat-by-seat basis.

And Mr Oldfield is being opposed by Aden Ridgeway, an aborigine who is standing as a Senate candidate for the Democrats, a small, leftish party. The fight is crucial: the skewed voting system has often left the Senate controlled by small parties, including the Democrats.

Mr Ridgeway flew on Friday to Port Macquarie, a coastal town in northern New South Wales, to speak at an anti-racism rally. In the Sydney press that day, Mr Oldfield said the Democrats had blundered by openly identifying Mr Ridgeway as an aborigine: "If there are people in New South Wales who realise he is aboriginal, then it could be regarded as a negative."

Mr Ridgeway dismissed the remark. He believed the Hansonites gained ground as a protest against the big parties, Liberal, National and Labor, by ordinary Australians, especially in declining rural towns, who have been tossed around by the rapid pace of social and economic change. "I blame the mainstream parties for this," he said. "They failed to manage change and failed to communicate it to the people."

One Nation's national rating fell last week to around 7 per cent from a 14 per cent earlier this year. But, even though she may be on a political knife-edge, Pauline Hanson could still determine the election's outcome.

In both opinion polls, the opposition Labor Party, led by Kim Beazley, was slightly ahead of the ruling conservative Liberal-National coalition, led by John Howard. If the trend continues this week, the winner on Saturday could well be decided by the distribution of preference votes, including those from Hansonite candidates.

Both Labor and the coalition have taken the high moral ground and ruled out doing deals with the Hanson party. But the tantalising prospect of power could yet tempt them to go back on their words.