The Wire

Pauline Hanson has decided, once again, to stand for parliament. And she’s angrily denied suggestions that she’s just doing it for the money. In 2003 the former One Nation leader spent 11 weeks in prison for electoral fraud before her conviction was overturned on appeal. And in 2004 she stood in the senate election, polled 4.5 percent of the vote and was rewarded with two hundred thousand dollars in public election funding. In returns to the Electoral Commission she left a page listing the cost of her campaign, blank. But her case has highlighted what some see as a loophole in the public funding of elections.