CANBERRA - Right-wing firebrand Pauline Hanson has resigned as leader of the floundering One Nation Party in a bid to reduce her profile as she prepares to face electoral fraud charges.
One Nation, railing against Asian immigrants and special treatment of Aborigines, leaped on to the public stage in 1998,
when it won one million votes, or 10 per cent.
But Australians deserted the party in the national election last November.
Hanson said yesterday that she had been worn down by the political and media attacks she had encountered over the past six years.
"I just feel that the position I've held in this party, I've been open slather for everyone to defame me, to lay charges upon me," the 47-year-old said.
"I suppose I'm at a stage now, I'm tired, I just want a bit of a break from it.
"I want to pick up the pieces of my life a bit, some sort of a private life, and that's what I'm doing."
But the former fish shopowner from Ipswich said she expected to remain the public face of One Nation, which wins as much publicity for her garish wardrobe as for its policies.
A party spokesman said Hanson's resignation would take her out of the spotlight while she prepared for a four-week committal hearing in the Brisbane Magistrates Court in April.
"This does not mean she is going to go away. We just wanted to take the pressure off Pauline," the spokesman said.
"Her life really is on hold pending the outcome of these court cases and we want to protect her from future actions."
Hanson has pleaded not guilty to three charges of fraudulently registering One Nation in Queensland in April 1997 (by misrepresenting the number of signed-up One Nation members) and to a charge of unlawfully claiming $A500,000 ($620,000) in electoral funding, which she has paid back with public donations.
Police say Hanson and co-accused David Ettridge face up to 10 years in jail if convicted.
Hanson's political demise was hastened by her unsuccessful campaign for a Queensland Senate seat at the November federal election.
One Nation was hammered by a 7.5 per cent swing against it and Hanson lost her bid for the Senate. The humiliation came after years of financial woes, vicious infighting and legal problems.
Hanson said One Nation's poor showing was not because of a change in attitudes in Australia but to conservative Prime Minister John Howard stealing her party's thunder on asylum seekers.
The Prime Minister finally countered the One Nation bogy by following its edict on issues such as how to stem the tide of boatpeople heading to Australia.
It led to a third term for Howard, whose Liberal/National coalition Government had been written off just a few months earlier.
The Hanson phenomenon had its origins in disaffection with Australia's previous Prime Minister Paul Keating and political correctness during the Labor years.
Her stand on immigration and indigenous welfare struck a chord, particularly with Australians in regional areas and the forgotten outer-suburban fringes of the capital cities.
Howard, who came to power in 1996 as a champion of the battlers, finally found an answer by shifting ground on boatpeople by blocking access to Australia for the MS Tampa's refugee cargo.
One Nation's failure to win a seat in the national Parliament in November leaves Senator Len Harris as the party's sole federal politician, with his six-year term in the Senate not up until 2004.
Hanson has vowed to stay involved, maintaining that politics will be boring without her.
That may be true, but she is unlikely to achieve again the influence she had in the 1990s.
- AGENCIES
CANBERRA - Right-wing firebrand Pauline Hanson has resigned as leader of the floundering One Nation Party in a bid to reduce her profile as she prepares to face electoral fraud charges.
One Nation, railing against Asian immigrants and special treatment of Aborigines, leaped on to the public stage in 1998,
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