Hanson could win Aussie seat:
Right-wing firebrand politician Pauline Hanson, who opposes Muslim immigration, has a realistic chance of returning to Australia’s Parliament in July elections, experts said Tuesday.
Hanson became one of Australia’s most divisive politicians in a generation when she used her first speech to Parliament in 1996 to attack the country’s nondiscriminatory immigration policy. The independent lawmaker warned that Australians were “in danger of being swamped by Asians.”
She was dumped by voters after a single three-year term in 1998 and has made several failed attempts to be elected to federal and state parliaments.
But experts agree the 61-year-old’s chances of winning a Senate seat in her home state of Queensland are enhanced because the July 2 poll is a rare so-called double-dissolution election, in which candidates need a smaller share of the votes to win a seat.
In a normal election, only half the Senate seats in each state are open for election. In a double-dissolution election, all 76 Senate seats are re-elected, giving an advantage to minor parties and independents.
Queensland University political scientist Katharine Gelber said Hanson has her best chance at being elected since 1998, but declined to give odds.
Griffith University political scientist Paul Williams rated her chances of winning a seat at “about 50-50.”
Williams said he expects either Hanson or independent senator Glenn
Lazarus to win a seat on the back of the so-called conservative protest vote. Lazarus is a colorful first-term senator known as the “Brick With Eyes,” a nickname he gained as a Rugby League football star. (AP)