Pauline Hanson

Some Lesser Known Facts About Pauline Hanson

• Pauline Hanson was born and grew up in the Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba, Australia.

• She is the youngest of seven siblings and grew up working in her parents’ fish and chip shop. She has also learnt bookkeeping at a young age.

  

• Hanson left school at 15 and worked various jobs, including waitressing and bar work.

• At the age of 16, she got married and became a mother at 17, making her one of the youngest future federal politicians to start family life so early.

• In 1978, Hanson met Mark Hanson, her second husband, who was a tradesman on Queensland’s Gold Coast. In 1980, they got married and started a plumbing business.

• In the company, Hanson handled all the administrative work, while her husband dealt with practical labour.

• In 1987, the couple divorced, and their company also closed down.

• Later, Pauline moved to Ipswich and started working as a barmaid.

• She then bought a fish and chip shop with a new business partner, Morrie Marsden. They established Marsden Hanson Pty Ltd and began operations from their recently opened fish and chip shop in Silkstone, a suburb of Ipswich.

• Along with administrative responsibilities, she took on additional practical responsibilities, including buying supplies and produce for the shop and preparing the food, which also helped her notoriety during her first political campaign. Over time, Hanson acquired full control of the company. However, she sold the company after her election in 1996.

• Hanson’s first election to office was in 1994, where she won a seat on the Ipswich City Council. However, she held the seat for 11 months because in 1995, due to administrative changes, she was being removed.

• In 1995, she joined the Liberal Party of Australia.

• For the March 1996 Federal election, she was endorsed as the Liberal candidate for the House of Representatives seat of Oxley.

  

• During her election campaign, she advocated the abolition of special government assistance for Aboriginal Australians, and she was disendorsed by the Liberal Party.

• Initially media also didn’t give her much importance, thinking that she would not win. However, Hanson won with 52% vote and entered the parliament as an independent candidate.

• In September 1996, Hanson gave her maiden speech to the House of Representatives, which was widely reported in the media.

• In her speech, she blamed Aboriginal peoples and Asian immigrants, as well as public policy regarding them. She stated that Australia was in danger of being overrun by Asian immigrants. She added that they took jobs needed by Australian citizens and made no effort to assimilate into Australian society, and called for a short-term halt to Asian immigration. She also demanded that foreign aid be abolished and that the money be used to create jobs in Australia.

I am fed up with being told, ‘This is our land.’ Well, where the hell do I go?” she said during her speech. “I was born here, and so were my parents and children. I will work beside anyone and they will be my equal but I draw the line when told I must pay and continue paying for something that happened over 200 years ago.”

• Although her strong political views were often criticized, she managed to develop a significant following among certain groups of Australians, resulting in a rapid increase in support for One Nation.

• In February 1997, Hanson founded Pauline Hanson’s One Nation political party.

• In the 2001 federal election, Hanson ran for a Queensland Senate seat but narrowly failed.

• In 2002, she was forced out of the One Nation party.

• She was briefly jailed in 2003 over electoral matters, and her conviction was overturned within weeks, making her one of the few Australian politicians imprisoned and cleared in the same year.

• After some failed attempts in politics, Pauline Hanson decided not to return to politics. However, she then stood as an independent candidate for one of Queensland’s seats in the Senate in the 2004 federal election. She was unsuccessful and received only 31.77% of the required quota of primary votes.

• In 2004, Hanson appeared in multiple reality television programs such as Dancing with the Stars, Enough Rope, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and This is Your Life.

• On 24 May 2007, Hanson launched Pauline’s United Australia Party.

• In the 2007 federal election, Hanson contested for one of Queensland’s seats in the Senate, where she received over 4 percent of the total votes.

• In the 2009 Queensland state election, Hanson made another unsuccessful attempt to contest the electoral district of Beaudesert as an independent.

• In 2010, Hanson deregistered Pauline’s United Australia Party and became a motivational speaker.

• In the 2010 federal election, she expressed her interest in returning to the political stage as a Liberal candidate, but no such offer was made to her by Liberal party leaders.

• In the 2011 State election, she ran as an independent candidate for the New South Wales Legislative Council, but was unsuccessful and received only 2.41 percent of the primary votes.

• In 2011, she was a contestant on the reality TV show, The Celebrity Apprentice, which aired on NBC.

• In 2013, Pauline rejoined the One Nation party and announced her candidacy as a Senate candidate in New South Wales for the 2013 federal election. However, she didn’t win.

• In November 2014, she became the leader of the One Nation party and announced that she would contest the seat of Lockyer in the 2015 Queensland state election. Hanson lost the seat by a narrow margin.

• In mid-2015, Hanson announced her candidacy for the Senate for Queensland at the 2016 federal election. She also announced the endorsement of several other candidates throughout Australia.

• Hanson won a seat in the Senate at the election and secured a spot on the National Broadband Network parliamentary committee.

• In August 2017, Hanson wore a burqa into the Senate, which led to heavy criticism, especially from Attorney-General George Brandis. After the incident, polls showed that 57% of Australians supported a public burqa ban.

• In the same month, One Nation changed its constitution to make Hanson party president for life and allow her to choose her successor.

• In October 2018, she proposed an “It’s OK to be white” Senate motion, which was initially supported by several government senators but then defeated and later rejected.

• In September 2019, Hanson was appointed co-chair of a parliamentary inquiry into family law.

• From May 2019 to July 2020, she was a regular contributor on Channel Nine’s Today show. However, in July 2020, she was removed from the role after she described people who lived in Melbourne public housing as drug addicts who couldn’t speak English.

• On 24 November 2025, after a bill to ban burqas failed, Hanson opposed that and wore a burqa on the Senate floor.

  

• After the incident, the entire Senate chamber was suspended for 90 minutes.

• On 25 November 2025, she was formally censured by the Senate and was suspended for seven sitting days.

• Throughout her political career, Pauline Hanson has taken strong anti-Islam positions where she opposed Halal certification, called for Muslim immigration bans, sought mosque restrictions, wore a burqa in the Senate as a protest, and repeatedly made comments condemned as Islamophobic.

• Pauline has always denied being racist; however, her views on race and immigration have been widely criticised in Australia and overseas.

• She opposes same sex marriage and also voted against it in the Senate.

• In addition to her political career, she is also an author. In March 2007, Hanson released her autobiography titled “Untamed and Unashamed.” In 2018, she collaborated with Tony Abbott to launch a collection of her speeches, titled “Pauline: In Her Own Words,” which was compiled by journalist Tom Ravlic.

  

• During the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Gallery of South Australia, Aboriginal artist Karka Dickens presented a collage titled “Clown Nation.” This piece featured a photograph of Pauline Hanson as part of a series called “A Dickensian Country Show.”

  

• Pauline Hanson loved yarn knitting. In an interview, she shared that she had hand-knit pure wool jumpers to help raise funds for the One Nation party.