…and she’s running for Parliament.

No, it’s not Pauline Hanson, although the media have dubbed her as the “next Pauline Hanson”.

Who? This dopey cow.

Small wonder Kate McCullock has joined the One Nation Party and will be their candidate for the seat of Macarthur in the next Federal Election, according to a press release from the Ku Klux Klan One Nation Party today.

Mad Kate is standing for the seat because:

…she felt strongly about freedom of speech.

“So many people felt so strongly about the issue in Camden but they were too terrified to speak out, and that’s sad,” she said.

She hoped standing as a candidate and “saying the truth and what I think” would give Australians the courage to speak up.

Or allow bigots and racists to spew their bile. Making it acceptable to be racist and ignorant and xenophobic and all that jazz.

Of course, racism and bigotry is never acceptable. Except Kate’s not racist, is she? Oh no. It’s the media’s fault for portraying her like that:

But Mrs McCulloch said she was prepared for an onslaught from the media.

“I have a feeling how the media are going to portray me as xenophobic and racist,” she said.

“They will sensationalise. You have to cop it sweet.

“It doesn’t worry me what they call me. I’ve got six kids. I know I stand for good values.”

That’s right. She’s not xenophobic and racist, she stands for good values (and what the hell does having six kids got anything to do with anything?). But she still thinks

…too much time and money is being spent on helping poorer countries overseas and helping asylum seekers, while Australian citizens such as farmers needed help.

Yeah, real good values, Mad Kate. Farmers need help from time to time but I would hardly put them in the same basket as asylum seekers.

Mad Kate’s good values also means being nice about other cultures:

We don’t want [Muslims] not only here, we don’t want them in Australia. They’re an oppressive society, they’re a dictatorship… The ones that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don’t want to accept our way of life.

Oh, sorry. Hang on, I’m sure I can find something she’s said that demonstrates Mad Kate’s good values…

Go and do something while I search. Go on, then. It will take me a while.

Yesterday, after the Daily Telegraph put the call out for Tommy Lee’s internet girlfriend, I wondered if they would ever learn. And because I’m a sarcastic bastard I actually did email the photo as I claimed.

Half of me was surprised when I received the following reply yesterday afternoon, but half of me wasn’t.

Scott,

My name is Sam and I work at the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. After you emailed our internet section claiming to know who our mystery Pauline Hanson look-a-like woman is, they forwarded onto me. Can we call you sometime to have a quick chat about who exactly this lady is that you used to know? If you can send us your number or, alternatively I can be contacted on this email or on 9XXXXXXX. We’d love to find a name for this lady and chase it up.

Cheers mate, hope to hear from you soon.

Regards, Sam

Firstly, what part of the email subject line “Tommy Lee’s internet lover” and image file name “tommyleelover.jpg” didn’t they understand? Secondly, why are they still chasing this story after it so comprehensively backfired on their news empire? And thirdly, like, WTF?

Dickheads.

The Daily Telegraph has asked its readers to do the “journalism” for it (as far as a story about Tommy Lee’s internet romance is “journalism”.)

So I emailed them this photo.

She’s back…

Controversial former politician Pauline Hanson will attempt to win a seat in the Queensland parliament at the March 21 state election. Ms Hanson confirmed today that she will again make a tilt at a parliamentary career, but declined to confirm where she will stand.

“I will be standing,” she said. “I’m sorry that I’m quite evasive about this at the moment, but there’s a lot happening and I just can’t say too much.”

…and she’s going to make a killing:

Registered political parties may claim reimbursement of election campaign costs, up to the level of their entitlement, in respect of those of their endorsed candidates who gained at least 4 per cent of the formal first preference vote in the electorate contested. The entitlement is calculated by multiplying the total of eligible votes received by the election funding rate indexed annually (currently $1.54737 for 2008/9).

In 2004, when she made a half-arsed run at the federal Senate, Paauuuline sucked almost $190,000 of sweet mother’s milk from the taxpayer teat. In 2007  it was almost $213,000. These most-recent funds were paid to her United Australia Party (a mum-and-dad operation, run from a one-room office at the rear of Dr TingTong’s boarding house in lower Ipswich) – however Paauuuline whipped it out of the party’s bank accounts before you could say “xenophobia”. Don’t dare question her though: she gets really cross and shows you ’rithmetic and fancy tables and stuff.

Hanson is virtually unelectable now, however there remains, especially in Queensland, a small cohort of loopy tin hat-wearing housewives, pensioners and rugby league supporters  - and probably a few blogers (sic) – who are still silly enough to vote for her. It’s potentially possible for her to run in state and federal elections for the next decade or more and clear a couple of million from the AEC’s swag. Something must be done, even if it is slightly undemocratic, to stop this idiotic bigot cashing in on her fading celebrity.

Ten-plus years on, we’re still getting doomsday predictions from our right-wing politicians who still seem to think getting swamped by whoever the latest Scary People are. 

Pauline Hanson in 1996:

“I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate.”

Of course, John Howard never denounced this blatant race-baiting and xenophobia. He just stole Pauline’s policies and made this country an embarrassing one to live in (yeah yeah, the right-wing morons reading this are probably thinking “If you don’t like it, leave!” Get fucked. That’s such a lame-arse response and you know it).

The same old bullshit continues today, courtesy of the doddery dribbling fuckwit Bill Heffernan:

Liberal senator Bill Heffernan later told reporters that Australia was at risk of being swamped by millions of climate-change refugees in the future, declaring it “absolute lunacy” to change the border protection regime.

The sooner Heffernan and his mob piss off, the better.

Pauline Hanson — who gets rooly, rooly upset when you accuse her of running for Parliament just for the cash — has received $213,000 in funding from the AEC in the wake of the 2007 federal election. This is a 12% improvement on her $189,000 haul at the 2004 election.

Nice work if you can get it. Run for Parliament every three years with a campaign budget of virtually zero and rake in a few hundred grand of taxpayer coin. Why a campaign budget of nothing? Well, Pauline doesn’t need to spend the money that other independents do on getting their name and face into the heads of voters; there’s a hardcore group of rusted-on Pauline voters out there who will continue to tick her name forever. And the media gives her a free run every time — the sort of advertising that other independents simply can’t buy.

In related news, independent candidate for the Senate in Victoria, Lachlan Connor, has missed out on AEC funding to offset the costs of his campaign. “Theoretically I was owed about six dollars for my two votes,” Mr Connor said. “But I fell a little short of the funding threshold so once again independents suffered and our democracy was weakened in Australia.”

Steve Fielding being a dick just now on ABC’s Insiders, jousting with the leaders of the Democrats and the Greens. He trotted out all the usual quotes about how evil the Greens are, including my personal favourite: “free heroin”. Fielding crapped on about petrol prices, grocery prices and bank fees, firmly positioning his “party” (let’s be honest about his “party” — it consists of one Parliamentary representative representing 1.88% of Victorians) as the consumer affairs micro party. Surprisingly, he only said the word “family” twice (excluding when he said his Party name) in contrast to Kevin Rudd’s now ad nauseum chanting of the “family” mantra. So maybe Steve Fielding should get in touch with the AEC and lodge an application to change his micro party’s name to the Today Tonight Party.

It was also revealed on Insiders that Family First in Queensland having been discussing a preference deal with Pauline Hanson which raises a very interesting question: is Pauline Hanson a Pentecostal?

And in a non-Steve Fielding aside about Insiders, Piers Ackerman said the Kyoto Protocol was “so 1990s” which was hilarious in the context of the 1970s haircut, shirt and jacket that cloaked his toad-like body.

Come and get me, laydeez

A shame for Lachlan Connor that he isn’t dating a third-rate country singer like Pauline Hanson, then he too could have his own nifty campaign jingle:

Ms Hanson yesterday launched her theme song with … Callaghan on the Gold Coast. Entitled Australian Way of Life, Ms Hanson joined guitar-playing Mr Callaghan as the crowd clapped. “For our freedom, for the future of our children, for this nation . . . the Australian way of life,” the duo sang.

Bonza. Later, Pauline cheerily endorsed immigration minister Kevin Andrews’ recent diatribe about Sudanese refugees. She went on to demand testing of immigrants for AIDS, HIV, TB and any other unhealthy acronyms. Oh, and lepers too. “There is a case of leprosy which has been recorded in South Australia”, she added.

Apart from the singing and gee-tar playing, boyfriend Chris Callaghan (shown here wearing black hat at oblique angle to obscure eyes) was noticeably silent. His musical credentials are indeed impressive, in stark contrast to Pauline’s record as a legislator:

Support act for Gloria Loring (Liz from Days of our Lives) in the mid 80’s.
Selected as Australian representative at the Bourail Festival in New Caledonia. Wrote and recorded “The Curse of the Rivers” for NSW phosphorous campaign.

Chris is seven years younger than Pauline, 52, proving that James Blundell doesn’t hold a monopoly on C&W cradle-snatching. But Chris isn’t just after Pauline’s electoral funding; his love is true. He’s even dedicated a song to her, a three-chord strum called “How Proud Are We?” (MP3 via news.com, three-minutes-of-your-life-gone warning). Admittedly, it was originally intended for Keiran Perkins, whom I hope received Chris’ admiration for different reasons.

Pauline Hanson is very sensitive about the perception that she’s launched another doomed bid at election to Parliament for the money. She walked out of a Channel Ten television interview the other day because the rude, rude hosts dared bring up the topic. Hanson’s so touchy about electoral funding that she’s devoted a whiny, poorly punctuated web page to it.

There has been a lot of media hype with regards to the electoral funding I received from the last election. There are suggestions from media and my opponents that I am running in this election purely for the electoral funding. This is not the case. Why am I the only one who appears to be targeted when it comes to electoral funding. (sic) Go and ask all the other candidates who are standing are they doing it for the money? (sic) Go and ask the registered political parties why they don’t pay tax on electoral funding they collect from elections. As an Independent and unregistered political party I am obligated to pay tax on electoral funding.

My expenses far exceeded what I was required to report to the Electoral Commission as to the cost of running my campaign. Is there one set of rules for Pauline Hanson and another for the political parties and everyone else. (sic)

And check out the neatly rigged table of electoral funding at the 2004 election.

Very misleading, Pauline. Please explain.