Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie has called Pauline Hanson a liar — politely but firmly — over her claim that he changed electoral laws two decades ago just to put her behind bars.
Hanson, the One Nation founder, broke down on Thursday in Perth while accusing Beattie and Liberal Party president Tony Abbott of orchestrating a “political witch hunt” that saw her jailed for 11 weeks in 2003 for electoral fraud. Her conviction was later quashed on appeal.
“It was a political witch hunt, because prior to my trial, Peter Beattie changed the laws in Queensland from a six-month jail term or a fine to seven years retrospective,” Hanson said, fighting back tears.
She also claimed Abbott set up a $100,000 slush fund to underwrite a legal bid to deregister One Nation before the 1998 federal election.
Beattie didn't mince words. He told reporters Hanson's account was “simply wrong”.
“The law change had nothing to do with Pauline Hanson,” Beattie said. “The irony of her claim is that the ALP rorters hated me for the rest of my time in office and no doubt still do.”
He said the reforms were driven by recommendations from the Shepherdson Inquiry, which exposed widespread branch-stacking and electoral enrolment fraud within the Queensland Labor Party. The scandal triggered a major political crisis for his government, with several MPs found guilty of electoral rorts, deputy premier Jim Elder resigning to fight charges, and a number of party members expelled from the ALP.
Among the allegations: a state MP bragged about having nine people enrolled at his unit in the 1980s, and claimed a federal Labor figure had a dozen people enrolled at his house in the 1970s.
Beattie said his government was re-elected on a platform of cleaning up electoral fraud, and the law changes delivered on an election commitment.
“The reforms were a response to the independent Shepherdson Inquiry and my desire to stamp out electoral fraud in the ALP. They were electoral integrity measures and nothing to do with Pauline Hanson,” he said.
Hanson's emotional speech also touched on her personal life. She revealed she was abused by a former partner, saying: “I won't go into detail, but I had domestic violence as well.” She described the toll her jailing took on her children: “The kids didn't have their fathers at that time. I was the only one that they had and so I was their whole life. And through politics, they've had to wear so much.”
Abbott has since expressed regret that Hanson went to jail, but stood by his efforts to expose what he called “shenanigans” within One Nation. In 2018, when launching her book Pauline, In Her Own Words, Abbott said: “Between Pauline and myself there has been a lot of dirty water under the bridge, but her willingness to let the past be the past is a sign of decency which is all too rare these days in our public life.”
Hanson remains a senator for One Nation, representing Queensland in federal parliament. The 2003 conviction that sent her to jail was for electoral fraud relating to the registration of the party in Queensland. She served 11 weeks of a three-year sentence before the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in 2004, finding the trial judge had misdirected the jury.