Her whole campaign has been characterised by farce, culminating in yesterday's fiasco when police were called to remove journalists from Pauline Hanson's campaign launch in Queensland. But with the major parties almost neck and neck in the final week of the election, Ms Hanson's xenophobic One Nation party could still play a key role in the final result under Australia's compulsory and preferential voting system.
"Our own flag, our own people, our own language, our own future, our own nation," she said at the launch, neatly summing up the controversial party's appeal to largely older and more rural Australians. The irony is that the former fish-and-chip shop owner, who only rose to prominence after the last federal election in March 1996, could lose her seat and have to run the party from outside parliament.
The latest polls suggest a cliff-hanger vote on Saturday between the Liberal-National Party government and the Labor opposition, with preferences in the marginal seats likely to produce a wafer-thin majority for one side or another.
One Nation's national vote is holding at between 7 per cent and 8 per cent. Support is higher in Queensland and South Australia, which pollsters predict could deliver the party seats and possibly the balance of power in the lower house.
Both the Liberal Party Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, and Opposition Labor leader, Mr Kim Beazley, have said it would not form a government with support of One Nation. However, both men have also appealed to the party's supporters to give them their second preferences.
One Nation is also standing in the Senate but the polls are divided whether it can get the necessary quota to radically alter the composition of the upper house.
The race-based election many were tipping only a few months ago has failed to materialise. The key issues of the six-week campaign have been tax and the government's plans to introduce a flat 10 per cent VAT-style tax on all goods and services including food.
Ms Hanson's attempts two weeks ago in outback Queensland to "play the race card" with the release of her so-called Aboriginal policy fell flat because she had nothing new to say and seemingly few people who wanted to hear it. She is regularly labelled a racist by critics but maintains her only platform is equal treatment for all Australians, be they of Irish, Asian or Aboriginal stock. "Get this straight, we are all Australians," she screamed at this reporter recently. "It makes no difference whether you're Aboriginal, whether you're born here or whether you're a migrant. We're all Australians together and don't try and divide this nation."
Yesterday's campaign launch foundered when she failed to produce promised policy-costing documents. When reporters refused to leave until the costings were produced the local constables were called to eject them. By any measure the whole campaign has been a public-relations disaster and the media has now been banned from following her.
The party has also failed to release documents on key policies including defence, foreign affairs or even the environment. Ms Hanson's response to why there was no environmental agenda was there was no need as people no longer threw litter out of their car windows like they did "many years ago".
But One Nation, whose largest donor is the pro-gun Sporting Shooters' Association, refuses to go away and now even some prominent Aboriginal leaders wish the race issue was finally addressed out in the open.
It is two years since Ms Hanson made her maiden speech in parliament and claimed Australia was being swamped by Asian migrants. After much huffing and puffing, and criticism for the failure of the Prime Minister, John Howard, to roundly criticise her, she faded slightly. Then in June this year One Nation won 11 seats in the Queensland state election and Hansonism seemed back to stay.
But, nationally, the party's vote has never matched its Queensland power base. Yet the preferences, which give One Nation such power in the electoral process, may be the downfall of its leader. Ms Hanson is standing in the seat of Blair near Brisbane and a deal among the other parties means she will need some 42 per cent of the primary vote to be returned. And while One Nation looks likely to make an impression on Saturday's vote its esteemed leader could yet be left standing on the sidelines.
AFP adds from Sydney: Improved trade data showing exports at near record levels gave the Australian government a welcome boost yesterday as new polls put it within striking distance of winning Saturday's national elections.
A poll conducted for the Australian newspaper at the weekend showed Mr Howard's government had clawed its way back to a one-point lead on primary votes, though Labor still had a lead of 51-49 per cent in the more important two-party preferred basis.
The Australian's poll coincided with another for the Bulletin magazine tipping a cliff-hanger election with Labor on 50.5 per cent to the Liberal-National coalition on 49.5 per cent.
With the coalition desperate to justify its claim to being superior economic managers in times of global crisis, official data showing the trade deficit had narrowed to a better than expected A$559 million for August came as a blessing.
Exports of goods and services rose by three per cent to A$9.9 billion while imports remained virtually unchanged at A$10.5 billion dollars.