Pauline Hanson is different, she claims, because of her “resilience”, “integrity” and “honesty”.
“This country is ready for change, they’re fed up with the two major political parties,” she told Andrew Bolt on Sky News last year. “They don’t trust the politicians. They’re sick of the lies, they have had enough of everything.
“They want someone who is going to be upfront and honest with them and I have always been that.”
Passing strange then that Hanson has been so careless in being upfront with voters about her patronage from Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart.
When asked last month if she had received any free flights from Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting for an event in Geelong late last year and had possibly breached Senate rules, Hanson appeared befuddled.
“I can’t remember,” she said, before her bevvy of orange-shirted supporters sought to save her from any further questioning with a chant of “Pauline! Pauline! Pauline!”
Later that afternoon, she hastily updated her register of interests to declare the gifted jet ride from Melbourne to Sydney after Hanson had been at the 19 October event, held to honour Rinehart’s generosity to a private agricultural college.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailJust a week later, Hanson and her chief of staff, James Ashby, jumped back in Gina’s political people-mover to travel to Florida, where the senator spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, partied with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago and stayed in Rinehart’s Palm Beach mansion. She is, after all, just an “ordinary Australian” doing ordinary things.
This trip too was not properly declared according to the Senate rules, which require the declaration of any gifts within 35 days.
According to Ashby, the declaration of the Florida flight and Rinehart’s hospitality failed to happen on time because of an administrative error. Ashby, who has been working in parliament for more than 15 years, claims he submitted the wrong paperwork and only realised his error when contacted by the Guardian.
Hanson’s failure to declare the flight from Melbourne to Sydney was never explained, although we did learn through her travel claims that she arrived at the event thanks to a $9,000 chartered aircraft that was billed to the taxpayer. Hanson claimed this was the cheapest possible option given the lack of commercial flights between Tamworth and Avalon. An outlandish cost to taxpayers? Only when other politicians do it.
Two disclosure failures is a bit sloppy and you might think this would be enough to get your paperwork in order, to ensure you are complying with Senate rules.
But last week, after further questions from the Guardian, which were ignored, Hanson’s office suddenly found three more undeclared flights that had been gifted to the senator through Rinehart’s beef company, S Kidman and Co, last year. The party updated the register along with a dump of flights provided for the South Australian election campaign, where the state’s new laws ban political donations.
Five undeclared flights in less than six months – a flagrant breach of Senate rules that are there to ensure conflicts of interest, real or perceived, can be seen by voters.
It is difficult to imagine a conflict of interest of more potential consequence than the leader of an ascendant, nativist political party being sponsored by the richest person in Australia, who has a vested interest and a clearly articulated political agenda of her own.
This oversight by Hanson is more than just a tardy disclosure of a free ticket or a flight upgrade.
Whether deliberately or absent-mindedly, Hanson has concealed the extent of Rinehart’s support for her. Indeed, in December, back on the ground from Florida for only a few weeks, Ashby said suggestions Rinehart was bankrolling the party were unfounded. “I haven’t seen any money from her,” he said.
This brings us to the Senate rules.
The text of the upper-house rules thunder with importance, saying that any senator who knowingly fails to comply with the declaration rules “shall be guilty of a serious contempt of the Senate and shall be dealt with by the Senate accordingly”.
Except, in practice, the Senate doesn’t seem to care.
In the history of the disclosure regime passed into law in 1994, only one senator has been referred to the privileges committee for inquiry into possible contempt over disclosure failures. That was senator Ross Lightfoot in 2005, who was cleared of contempt when the committee couldn’t find he had done so knowingly.
For Hanson to be sanctioned, she would need to be referred by another senator to the privileges committee for inquiry into possible contempt. A vote in the Senate then determines if that happens.
There is much hand-wringing in the major parties about how to “deal” with Hanson.
According to the party itself, attacking One Nation doesn’t work. And indeed, it is possible that holding Hanson to account for her behaviour may galvanise some of her support base.
But at a time when Hanson is gorging herself on voter cynicism, dragging down the institutions of which she has been a beneficiary and claiming to be a stalwart of truth and integrity, surely she has to be challenged when she breaks the rules?
Yes, there have been failures on both sides of politics to update their register of interest in a timely manner, although it is difficult to find such an egregious example as this. Yes, the major parties are reluctant to start a tit-for-tat trawling through disclosures and a flurry of privileges referrals.
But if it is possible to breach the rules time and time again, with no consequence, what is the point of them?
And what message does it send to the public about the political class? What message does it send to vested interests who might seek to influence a member of parliament? If anything, it amplifies Hanson’s message that they are all as bad as each other.
There are genuine integrity politicians in Canberra who see the need for greater transparency and accountability. Time and time again, our elected representatives have pushed back against such measures and yet they scratch their heads and wonder why the public has lost faith in them.
Lee Hanson is Pauline’s daughter and the One Nation heir apparent. She lives in Tasmania and is drawing a taxpayer-funded salary as an adviser to a New South Wales senator who comes from Queensland.
In a press release titled “Lee Hanson Demands Real Oversight and Integrity”, the Tasmanian Senate candidate opined that trust in politics was continuing to erode and that One Nation would help fix it.
She argued that “only meaningful reform – real oversight, stricter rules, and consequences for dishonesty – can restore Australians’ faith in their elected representatives”. Hear, hear Lee.
