The comeback of Australia's most famous anti-immigration politician, Pauline Hanson, descended into farce today when a flamboyant former footballer said he would run against her in a state election.
Hanson, a former fish-and-chip shop owner who turned her nationalist One Nation party into a political force a decade ago, said she planned to stand as a candidate in an election in her home state of Queensland on March 21.
"I'm getting to a stage where I'm tired, but the fight is still in me. I just want to see some honesty and accountability from our politicians," Hanson said, announcing her run in the mainly rural electorate near the Gold Coast tourist strip.
But Hanson's campaign for Beaudesert was threatened by former Australian Rules player Warwick Capper, who gained notoriety wearing ultra-tight shorts and driving a pink supercar during a high-profile on-field career in the late 1980s.
"We could have a bit of a cook-off between me and Pauline," Capper joked to reporters. "She's got the fish shop and I'm about to open a coffee shop called Warwick Cappuccino soon in Surfers, and if I win in Beaudesert I might open one out there too."
Capper, who for years aggravated football purists with his party lifestyle and long blond hair, said he would launch his campaign flanked by a bevy of placard-carrying bikini girls with backing from a national men's magazine.
"Politics is like a popularity contest sometimes isn't it? But I'm pretty popular too, and I think I'd fit in OK there," he said.
Hanson, 54, won fame in 1996, entering national parliament as an independent calling for cuts to Aboriginal welfare and immigration. Then she had said Australia was in danger of being "swamped by Asians."
She turned One Nation into a force that drew a million votes at its 1998 peak, but she subsequently lost her seat and was later convicted of electoral fraud and briefly went to jail.
Released in 2003 after her conviction was overturned, the mother of four left politics and became a minor celebrity, at one time entering a TV dancing competition.
Australia faces its sharpest economic slowdown since a deep recession in the early 1990s. Unemployment is creeping higher, investment has slumped and the national government said this week it would cut the annual immigration intake for the first time in eight years due to the weakening demand for labour.
Reuters