Pauline Hanson. Photo / Richard Robinson
SYDNEY - The release now of nude photographs of Queensland election candidate Pauline Hanson could be a political marketing ploy, says a former colleague.
Former One Nation member and New South Wales MP David Oldfield, a former Hanson adviser, said he thought the timing of the release of the photos
was "amazing".
They would have been worth a lot more 10 years ago, when Hanson was involved in federal politics, he said.
News Ltd yesterday published censored images of the nude photographs reported to have been taken by a boyfriend when Hanson was 19.
The photos, taken in the mid-1970s, show Hanson posing seductively.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that the boyfriend who took the photographs is a former Army commando now living in Sydney on a supplementary disability pension and struggling to repay debts incurred from bone cancer treatment.
It said Jack Johnson, 52, spent 18 years in the Army and met Hanson when she worked in a Brisbane grocery shop.
"I had the best Harley in town," Johnson said. "That's why she was keen on me."
Oldfield said it might help her political campaign, portraying her as a betrayed victim.
"I would not see it as an issue from a political point of view," he told the Nine Network. "I would think it's a good spread from a victim's point of view ... see it as a political bonus.
"If indeed the photos were taken when she was 19 years old, she's a newly married young mother and I would have thought ... that would be embarrassing, tarnishing from her perspective," Oldfield said.
Hanson declined to comment. The One Nation founder will contest the Beaudesert seat as an independent on Saturday.
- AAP
