Pauline Hanson was an independent Member of Parliament who stood for all that politics should be about. She was honest, sincere and solely concerned with the plight of her country. Her initial Liberal party endorsement could not survive her honesty and she soon discovered she was fighting for election as an independent. Despite lacking the support of any commercial interest and derided by a hostile media, the fish and chip shop lady won the seat of Oxley, in Queensland. Not that this little Aussie battler could expect to achieve much in the federal parliament, she was only one vote among many; one sincere, untutored voice in a crowd of slick con-men, surrounded by media professionals eager to hold her up to scorn and derision.
This courageous woman found that to do her duty she was risking not only her money, but her reputation and her life (she became the first ordinary MP to be assigned a bodyguard). For stating her opinions, she was pilloried and persecuted. The truth of her statements was rarely questioned, but for daring to contradict popular delusion she was treated like a heretic. And this meant an ominous deterioration in Australian politics, for terror in the form of violent mobs appeared for the first time.
After being unseated from the parliament she was denounced, dragged through the courts and subsequently sentenced to three years jail in August 2003.