‘I’m back’, and with these two words, Pauline Hanson stated the bleeding obvious as she delivered her maiden speech in the Senate on September 14, 2016.  Twenty years on and her second maiden echoes the first with ‘We are in danger of being swamped by Asians’, being challenged by ‘Now we are in danger of being swamped by Muslims’.

Pauline elaborates on her efforts to get back into parliament after her defeat in the lower house seat of Blair in 1998 but fails to mention that in 1996 I advised her to stand for the Senate in 1998, telling her that she would be preferenced out of any House of Representatives electorate.  I told her that she would almost certainly poll the quota required for a Senate seat and her eyes lit up when I mentioned a six-year term.  Little did I know at the time, that as well as betraying Tony Abbott, David Oldfield was conspiring with Pauline to take my job, which he did.  According to a source, Pauline was told that she could not become Australia’s first female PM if she took my advice to stand for the Senate.

Pauline was in good spirits after our discussion about the Senate but within a few days her mood changed dramatically and on Monday, December 9, 1996, at approximately 3.30 pm, she sacked Jeff Babb and myself saying,  ‘I am dismissing you both.  I want you to clear your stuff out of the office and leave’.  I said,  ‘Why are you sacking us,’ to which she replied, ‘I am not telling you’.  She called security and two attendants appeared within thirty seconds and Babb and I were escorted out of Parliament House to an awaiting media. Crazy rumours were bouncing around including one alleging I was organising my own Senate ticket.  Our dismissal had been very well organised and Pauline’s loyalty had never existed.  Those in the media and others interested in Pauline’s history should read my version of events dealt with in my book ‘The Pauline Hanson Story by The Man Who Knows’, available still online.

Pauline’s triumphant return to the federal parliament was hastened by Malcolm Turnbull foolishly calling for a double dissolution, followed by his intemperate remarks about there being no place for Pauline in contemporary Australian politics.  With no DD, Pauline’s three other Senators had no chance but now Pauline will serve six years while her three companions will have three years each before they face the voters again.

True to form, the leftist media has gone into meltdown again twenty years down the track and Pauline has been subjected to the new weapons of Facebook and Twitter.  After the first Maiden speech, I was amazed at the calls I took in Pauline’s office from Indians, Malaysian Chinese, Filipinos, Aborigines and others – all supporting her.  Malaysian – born Chinese Ted Seng who arrived in Australia in 1984, was the Deputy Mayor of the NSW Randwick City Council in 1996 and was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, November 16, 1996, as saying he did not want Australia to be ‘Asianised, Americanised or Africanised’.  He also said that migrants had to make sacrifices and accept that Australia was predominantly ‘Anglo – Saxon and Christian’.  Of course Ted Seng came under enormous pressure to shut up but he met with Pauline in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge at Sydney Airport after I had introduced him to her on the telephone.  A lot of the initial anti-Hanson fury would have been defused if Ted Seng had been given greater media exposure at the time but that of course would have been at odds with the agenda of the mad Left.

Now as before, Pauline’s enemies are predicting dire economic repercussions in response to this second speech but as before the world will not end.

Multiculturalism is again slammed by Hanson but this time shares the spotlight with Muslim immigration and its impact on Australian society.  In 1976, the treacherous Malcolm Fraser brought in the first Lebanese Muslims against the stern advice from his Immigration Department authorities.  Fraser was told many of these refugees were unskilled, illiterate and had questionable character and standards of personal hygiene.  As well, Fraser was told too many of these people lacked the ‘required qualities’ for successful integration.  Imagine this language being used today?

Malcolm Turnbull and a gaggle of MPs of all persuasions rabbit on about the wonders of multiculturalism but there is almost daily gunfire in the Western suburbs of Sydney and ghastly stabbings are everywhere.  Ethnic gangs do their thing and now female Sudanese thugs are on the rise in Melbourne while our police don’t appear to have the ticker to deal with this vermin.  If the reports are correct, what a disgrace that Melbournians have to resort to buying baseball bats as a last line of defence. So much for the nutty mantra of ‘unity through diversity’.

As Hanson’s enemies run around in circles, an Essential poll from last month suggests that 49 per cent of Australians back a Muslim migrant ban with 60 per cent support from Coalition voters, 40 per cent from Labor and a surprising 34 per cent from Green voters.  As the LNP sits stranded like rabbits in the spotlight, Hanson’s vote continues to surge as it has done with the bungled census, Baird’s greyhound debacle, the backpackers’ tax and every terrorist attack whether overseas or in Australia. The Essential poll has gone viral, has the Left foaming at the mouth and will surely stiffen the spines of those mainstream Australians who may have been sitting on the fence.

The Hanson maiden speech Mk II sends clear messages to all ‘The forgotten people’ – the tradies, farmers, rural and city workers, small business and as she did twenty years ago, she calls for radical changes to the Family Court.  Hanson calls out Islam, slamming its treatment of women, sharia law, the burqa and halal certification, concluding with a call to shut the gates – stopping further Muslim immigration.

Hanson also doesn’t miss the rorting in the welfare system, which is costing taxpayers billions, and she gives a good whack to our health budget.  In 1985, Bob Hawke was behind moves to introduce The Australia Card, which was to amalgamate other government ID systems and act against tax avoidance and health and welfare fraud. The Australia Card was before its time and never made it in the parliament but times have changed and the Australia Card could make a comeback with the support of One Nation senators.  Why have LNP MPs failed to resuscitate such an important issue after all these years?  One answer is that most LNP MPs just don’t know their political history. Hanson hasn’t missed the rorting in the parliament either, when she challenges the ‘entitlements’ of MPs and Labor’s Senator Stephen Conroy’s strange departure from the parliament will just pump up her vote.  Conroy sooked it in the Senate but will walk away with a $200,000 per annum taxpayer funded pension.  Further pumping up Hanson’s vote could be the rumoured appointment of the Turkish Muslim Mehmet Tillem to replace Conroy in the Senate – it just doesn’t rain, it hails.

In 1998, Pauline Hanson burst into the headlines again when her One Nation candidates won eleven seats in the Queensland state election with 23 per cent of the vote, which had the Libs and the Nats wondering what the hell had happened.  Luckily for Hanson’s political enemies, her MPs who had been poorly selected, fell over one by one with the exception of Dorothy Pratt who was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in 1998 as the One Nation MP for Barambah before leaving One Nation in 1999 to sit as an independent.  In 2001 Barambah was abolished and replaced with Nanango which Pratt won as an independent and then went on to win in 2004, 2006 and 2009, before standing down at the 2012 election with multiple sclerosis, thankfully of the milder variety.

Meanwhile, the One Nation vote just keeps on growing with silly Aboriginal footballers calling for players to sit on the ground when the national anthem is played at the finals, Malcolm Turnbull calling for refugees from Costa Rica and now the South Australian blackout disaster when windmills and solar panels just couldn’t deliver the goods.  What madness caused the Weatherill Government to not only close down the last coal-fired power station but blow it up using dynamite?  Where will the power come from to build all those submarines?  Alan Jones is relentlessly pursuing Josh Frydenberg over renewable energy and Frydenberg himself should urgently sit down with Jones and carefully listen to those people who are claiming bad effects from taxpayer subsidised, Chinese-manufactured wind farms.

The 45^th Parliament is still finding its feet but already One Nation would appear to have a problem in the West.  Senator Rod Culleton has some complicated legal problems, which could cause him grief and lead to him having to stand down, meaning that Pauline could nominate a replacement. Some media are describing his office as ‘dysfunctional’ and being totally committed to anti-banking strategies at the expense of other One Nation policies.

One Nation’s next challenge will be the Queensland State Election and Pauline has said that she will stand in every seat.  To avoid the disaster of 1998, Pauline will need hard-headed and politically savvy people to properly screen candidates and then there is the huge job of selecting staff for successful candidates and    even the major parties have serious problems in these areas.  On the credit side this time around, One Nation may be able to do some positive preference deals with the LNP as twenty years on from her Maiden Speech Mk I, the political landscape has seen significant changes in her favour.

Pauline needs to reach out to the tradies, the shooters and fishers, as some of her candidates could come from these groups – she needs people who have been off the bitumen and who are connected with the mainstream. At the risk of being politically incorrect, One Nation needs to look at attracting more Christian refugees and there are plenty of whites in Europe and Africa who could bring their skills and energy to Australia.

Finally, One Nation needs lots of dollars and Hanson and her people will have to sit down calmly and quietly with farmers, small business and those big businesses that can see One Nation having solutions to some of their problems.  Pauline Hanson has triumphantly returned to the parliament – does she have the energy and the discipline to stay there?