By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
PAULINE Hanson has fronted the Nine media megalith in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald’s chief political reporter while another journalist dredged up a series of unflattering comments from her first husband.
Chief political reporter Paul Sakkal, who with his Canberra crowd, would normally have written Hanson off as a political force, was forced to demonstrate some unwilling respect for Hanson, given that he had to acknowledge she was now more popular than Anthony Albanese as Australians’ pick for PM.
A poll carried by the Herald had Hanson leading on 33% as preferred Prime Minister to Albanese on 29%.
The SMH interview followed Hanson’s address to the National Press Club where GetUp pulled off a stunt with a protest banner dropping down behind her.
Sakkal raised fairly predicable questions about her clash with a female journalist, her comments on Moslems, Asian immigration and indigenous affairs and her willingness to take on the PM’s job.
Sakkal, quoting Tony Abbott, asked her if she’d changed over her 30 years in politics to which Hanson responded straight-faced: “No, because the rest of the country has caught up with me and that’s what people say, because I’ve been consistent with what I’ve been saying over years and although it was looked at politically incorrect to say those things at that time by saying ‘swamped by Asians’ – and that was said because we had a high intake of immigrants coming from Asian countries.
“With the figures I had we would actually have had a huge number of Asians in the country by 2050 – so I was expressing my views on this and it was [reported] totally out of proportion that I don’t like Asians – and that’s not true at all,” she said.
“And because I questioned the Aboriginal industry – where’s the money going, it’s not helping, why are we treating people totally different based on their race? That’s not Australian, treat people totally the same.”
It was classic Pauline – straight down the line and too unsophisticated for a sophisticated city political journalist. But Sakkal knew he had to acknowledge that her concerns were the concerns of a rapidly growing number of Australians.
Sakkal’s Hanson interview was placed within the fairly intensive interview of Hanson’s first husband Walter Zagorski by journalist William Davis.
Zagorski, who lives in the Brisbane suburb of Wynnum was nasty and very cynical about the motivations of his former wife Hanson, who was only 16 when she married him. He accused her of being selfish and dishonest and said she “got into politics because she figured it’d be easy and she’d make more money, that’s all.”
It sounded like Zagorski hadn’t gotten over the break-up so many years ago, and was still willing to fire a few shots the way of his ex, also accusing her of being unfaithful and disputing the fatherhood of their second child, Steven.
Davis noted that Pauline, in her autobiography, described Zagorski as “a good-looking guy with a vibrant personality, very young at heart and a loveable character”.
“I came to trust and love Walter … we spent most of our time together going to movies, for a drive, or just being together, even when he worked on his car,” she wrote.
It’s no surprise that a teenage marriage might end up on the rocks, and Hanson herself recently said in a recent appearance in Perth she would not advise girls to marry at the age of 16. She also referenced her second marriage to the late Mark Hanson, a plumber, an raised allegations of domestic violence.
The article went on to tell of Hanson having her first child at 17 and two more by the age of 21. It was not unusual in that time, the late 60s and early 1970s.
It also detailed some of Zagorski’s background – the son of a Polish woman refugee who was a one-time resident of the Auschwitz concentration camp who came out to Australia by ship.
The “warts and all” article underlines Hanson’s rough ride through life and perhaps explains her gritty political determination over the years that has ultimately won her the respect of many Australians.
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