Hanson's jailing may cause backlash

The jailing of fiery right-wing Australian politician Pauline Hanson was likely to rekindle smouldering issues such as Asian immigration and handouts for aborigines, political leaders warned yesterday.

The three-year jail sentence handed to her for breaking political party registration laws could breathe new life into the maverick Hanson's political career, commentators also said.

As Hanson began her fourth day in Brisbane Women's Prison, former Queensland coalition Premier Rob Borbidge said that Australia could be in for a new round of the xenophobic politics which rocketed Hanson to fame in the late 1990s.

"I think that there is a great danger that just when Hansonism had run its course, the jailing of Pauline Hanson may well reactivate a whole series of debates and issues and disruption of the social fabric of Australia," he said.

This would resurrect issues which Australia thought it had dealt with after Hanson's loss of her parliamentary seat and her subsequent political isolation, he said on ABC Radio.

Similar fears were raised by Queensland's Labor Premier, Peter Beattie, who replaced Borbidge as state leader in 1998.

"Politicians are all terrified of the consequences of the court case," Beattie said.

Beattie is leader of the state in which 49-year old Hanson rose from fish and chip shop owner to federal Parliament in 1996, where she attacked Asian immigration, handouts for Aborigines and free trade.

This raised alarms throughout Asia and in Australia's generally liberal cities of a revival of the White Australia policy which once closed the country to Asians.

Beattie was commenting as a public groundswell from both opponents and supporters of Hanson grew over the severity of her sentence.

Prime Minister John Howard, a political opponent of Hanson, on Friday described the sentence as too severe.

Initial reactions that the jail sentence would finally end Hanson's political career were being questioned yesterday.

"Jail is not the end," The Sydney Morning Herald said on its front page.

"Suddenly a political star which burnt out long ago has flared to life again," the paper said.