The far-right Australian politician Pauline Hanson has announced she is giving up her home country and moving to England. Ms Hanson, Australia’s most controversial former MP who campaigned for parliament on an anti-immigration platform, will migrate to Britain after selling her house in rural Queensland, taking a cruise, and visiting New Zealand.
The 55-year-old former fish and chip shop owner complained Australia had become a "harder" place to live with fewer opportunities. She said she was selling her property southwest of Brisbane and was leaving Australia to live in Britain indefinitely.
"Our governments lack enough people with the fortitude to speak up without fear or favour," Ms Hanson told Australia’s Women’s Day magazine. "Over-regulation, increasing taxes and lack of true representation are affecting our way of life. "I feel very much for the young ones. Once it was common for them to own their own home. Not now. It's a harder place. Sadly, the land of opportunity is no more applicable." Ms Hanson’s father is from England and her mother’s family are Irish, which means she can hold dual citizenship. She will leave her four adult children behind in Australia.
“Every country has something unique to offer, and I want to experience that,” Ms Hanson said.
“…Australia will always be my home. But I love England and Ireland. My mother’s family come from Limerick and my father’s from London. I love the culture.”
She added that she would love to buy property in the English countryside if she found the right place.
“If I found some special place I would consider it seriously,” she said. “Look, I have my children here, and they’d be devastated if I went for good. But as it stands, I’m going to be away indefinitely.”
Ms Hanson, the former leader of the One Nation political party, entered Australian politics in 1996 when she famously said she believed that “we are in danger of being swamped by Asians”, and questioned multiculturalism during her maiden speech to Australia’s parliament in Canberra.
She has been prone to controversy throughout her 14-year political career and caused an international furore after demanding an end to special welfare benefits for indigenous Australians in 1996. She was also briefly jailed in 2003 for electoral fraud.
Her last tilt at politics came last year with an unsuccessful bid for the Queensland state seat of Beaudesert as an independent MP.
Ms Hanson did not say whether she planned a political career in England, and would not comment to The Times when contacted earlier today.
However she told the magazine she realised her political career in Australia was over.
“I know I will never be given a chance to re-enter Parliament again,” she said.
Last year Ms Hanson received an apology over the publication of 30-year-old raunchy photographs of a near naked woman that local newspapers incorrectly claimed were her, a day after she lost a bid for re-election in Queensland.
“As I have always said, ‘politics is a dirty game’,” she said of the photo scandal. “I’ve moved on, but this is another reason why I’ve had enough. I want peace in my life. I want contentment and that’s what I’m aiming for.”
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Our View
now the question is will the BNP call for a ban to stop this far right immigrant coming into the UK or put on its selective immigrant blindness goggles and welcome her with open arms like they did with South Africans Arthur Kemp and Lambertus Nieuwhof.
Wonder were the welcome party will be?
