PLEASE EXPLAIN?

I was thinking today that I may have found a way to pick up a lazy $100,000. Why not?

I did 12 days jail after originally being sentenced to six weeks for contempt of court and fined $25,000. My radio station was fined $55,000.

And that was a sentence imposed by a judge acting alone.

So why should I get some compo? Well, former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, and her political partner in crime, David Ettridge reckon that they are owed money by the Queensland taxpayers.

And they are demanding one million dollars each for the eleven weeks they served behind bars for electoral fraud. Nearly one hundred thousand dollars a week.

Nice work if you can get it!

They are suing the Queensland Government of Labor leader Peter Beattie

even though the legal system is apparently separate and even though they were convicted by a jury.

Queensland’s Court of Appeal quashed their convictions in November last year and their three-year jail terms. The decision was also made by the State DPP not to retry them.

As I said at the time. Please explain.

Along the way the judges sprayed everybody from the prosecution and defence lawyers as well as Prime Minister Howard and the ubiquitous Bronwyn Bishop for their comments after Hanson’s conviction and jail sentence – along with her One Nation cohort David Ettridge.

Hanson and Ettridge were freed within the hour. The seismic political tremors were quickly being felt in Canberra. Lots of people ducking for cover. And the commentators speculated on Hanson reviving One Nation and standing for The Senate out of Queensland in this year’s federal election. That won’t happen. Hanson has even opted out of campaigning for One Nation in next month’s Queensland state election.

Hanson could have adopted the slogan “Please Explain” and gone after the major parties portraying herself as a victim of political persecution. After all, Bronwyn Bishop, a former Liberal Government frontbencher, called her "Australia’s first political prisoner”.

That was hyperbolic rubbish but in an election such claims are powerful.

The Appeal Court virtually said that Hanson and Ettridge were convicted on a technicality. That they may not have legally had the 500 members needed for the $500,000 taxpayer handout but they had 6000 supporters who thought they were member of One Nation and acted accordingly.

I believe the conniving, contriving, Pauline Hanson One Nation triumvirate – led and manipulated by David Ettridge and especially David Oldfield – were too clever by half.

They virtually ran One Nation as a Pty. Ltd. They did get electoral funds illegally. But a three-year jail sentence with no parole was manifestly excessive.

And their release from jail after serving eleven weeks behind bars – plus an acquittal – meant that the Hanson and Ettridge bail applications pending their appeals should have been treated with more compassion.

Friday, January 23, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004