Pauline Hanson

The former One Nation leader, famous for warning in a speech to Parliament that Australia could be "swamped" by Asian immigrants, said she will run as an independent Senate candidate from her home state and power base, Queensland.

The 50-year-old Hanson spent 11 weeks in jail last year after being sentenced to three years for electoral fraud, but an appeals court later overturned her conviction and ordered her freed in November -- clearing the way for her to run in the election.

She was first elected to federal Parliament as an independent in the Queensland seat of Oxley in 1996 on a platform that attacked Asian immigration and federal government aid to Australia's impoverished Aborigines.

But after her One Nation party rose to national prominence in the late 1990s it quickly splintered amid internal dissent and is no longer a national force.

The Japan Times Weekly: Sept. 25, 2004
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