The Bug's political editor Don Gordon-Brown and One Nation supremo David Ettridge shared adjoining flats in Manly, Sydney, for some months last year.
They formed a close friendship, often stopping on the first-floor verandah of their dilapidated block of flats fronting the surf beach on North Steyne to discuss the whether. As in whether your correspondent thought it would be possible to fund 2 percent loans for business and party supporters by simply printing more money to which he replied: "Yeah, go for it and how do I get an application form?"
It came as no surprise, therefore, when your columnist got a call from Ettridge earlier this week, inviting him to a one-on-one interview with Pauline Hanson in the wake of her party's Queensland poll success, where her fledgling party grabbed 11 seats – unprecedented in Australian political history.
Your columnist immediately left his Sydney city office, took the 4.17pm East Hills train from Town Hall to Circular Quay where he met up with The Bug's cartoonist, grabbed the ferry, Collaroy, to Manly and soon found himself face to face with Australia's most charismatic woman politician (outside Bronwyn Bishop and Yvonne Chapman) in her cluttered party headquarters in Manly. Here is their exclusive exchange, overseen by an ever-watchful Ettridge.

The Perils of Pauline......

The Bug: Mrs Hanson, congratulations on your party's amazing debut in the recent Queensland elections.
Hanson: Thank you.
The Bug: The federal election is looming and you've long been critical of many Howard Government decisions. What issue or issues from the Queensland poll are most likely to translate into votes for One Nation candidates federally?
Hanson: Without a doubt, the anti-gun laws. They've left decent people feeling unarmed and vulnerable. Do you know, not a night goes by when I don't I have this recurring nightmare over Howard's anti-gun buy-back scheme?
The Bug: Really.
Hanson: Yes, it's horrid. I dream that I'm in bed late at night, wrapped up as snug as a bug with a book by my favourite author.
The Bug: Grisham?
Hanson: Hitler. And then they appear at the windows, dozens of them. Slanty eyed Indonesian soldiers, grinning at me through crooked teeth stained a sickening dark yellow by betel juice. Even though I'm naked, I jump out of bed and still manage to slip into my pale apricot raw-silk teddy fringed with light cream lace as they smash through the windows with the butts of their rusty World War 2 issue 303s.
The Bug: How terrible!
Hanson: It's horrid. I rush to the cupboard where I normally keep my AK 42 Bakalite semi-automatic with the extended clip, only to realise that I've foolishly handed it in months ago in return for a pittance. By this time, the soldiers have thrown me roughly onto my bed, using coarse grass ropes to tie me spread-eagled to my four-poster. One soldier who appears to be their leader steps forward and, egged on by the ritual sadistic chanting of his mates, uses the tip of his bayonet to slice off the three silver clips on my skin-tight teddy. I refuse to show fear as I feel the bayonet tip begin to delve into those private folds that makes every woman what she is.
The Bug and Ettridge: Go on!
Hanson: Into my... you know...my essence. My very being. ...my.... little Miss Muffet.
The Bug: Little Miss Muffet?
Ettridge: Little Miss Muffet.
Hanson: (blushing) Yes. I look sideways defiantly at the other soldiers with their pathetic manhoods just visible through their filthy drab green tunics. The leader slips effortlessly from his jungle greens and stands before me, his heathen urgency all too obvious. As he forces himself upon me chanting "The People United Will Never Be Defeated", the other soldiers use the sharpened tips of bamboo sticks to lightly trace the raised outline of the deeply coloured areola on my heaving breasts, sadistically avoiding my nipples that stand out defiantly like bright red plums. I decide there and then that I'm not going to show fear any more. "Take me, you yellow pinko bastards," I scream defiantly. They come at me from all sides and my every orifice begins to explode with unbelievable pain as I slip thankfully into unconsciousness.....
The Bug: My goodness.
Hanson: Yes. Yesss. Yessss. Oh YEESSSS!
The Bug: Mrs Hanson? Mrs Hanson?
Hanson: Oh yesssss! Mmmmm.
The Bug: Mrs Hanson? Are you okay?
Hanson: Mmmmm.
Ettridge: She'll be okay in a moment.
Hanson: Mmmmm.
The Bug: Mrs Hanson?
Hanson: Sorry. Where was I?
Ettridge: This might be a good time for a sandwich?
Hanson: Not now. No. I couldn't.
The Bug: No, we're fine too.
Hanson: Good. Would you boys like something to eat before we continue?
The Bug and Ettridge: No thanks.
The Bug: You were telling us about these terrible nightmares. And how they started when John Howard introduced his anti-gun laws?
Hanson: Well, they got far worse then, that's for sure.
The Bug: The guns issue. Was that the main message to the major political parties from the solid support you've garnered up there in Queensland?
Hanson: One of them. You know; I warned all the major parties over an over again but they just wouldn't listen to the message.
The Bug: And that being?
Hanson: That they're not listening to the message.
The Bug: Please explain?
Hanson: I have listened to the message from the good people up their in Queensland and they are heartily sick of the mainstream parties and their policies.
The Bug: You mean there, don't you? Up there. T.H.E.R.E.
Hanson: Yes, of course. Did I really say their? Sorry.
The Bug: That's okay. You won't find this media outlet having a go at you because of any perceived lack of any formal education on your part. Quite frankly, we weren't sure what xenophobic meant either. Besides, we think those smart-arse academics and overpaid TV interviewer wankers make a big mistake when they try to portray you as just another uneducated, really dumb, red-headed, rednecked racist bitch.
Hanson: Thank you.
The Bug: So the message you're getting is that average Australians think the major political parties are making a big mistake with their current policies.
Hanson: Exactly.
The Bug: Their policies are wrong?
Hanson: They're wrong to have policies.
The Bug: But surely One Nation has policies, doesn't it?
Hanson: Sure, a couple, but not believable ones. The big parties make the mistake of putting up policies that have a chance of being implemented. Then when they fail as they invariably do in such uncertain times – there's the inevitable political backlash. That's when One Nation cashes in – on people's understandable fears and frustrations.
The Bug: You really believe people are afraid?
Hanson: Very much so. When I talk to people in the shopping arcades throughout this great nation of ours, I can see the fear in their eyes. One Asian... I mean One Nation offers them hope: it's a philosophy rather than a policy; a pathway rather than a party. We offer a return to the good old days when people felt safe in their beds, a new Holden only cost two thousand pounds and darkies knew their place.
The Bug: That's rather racist, isn't it?
Hanson: Thank you.
(At this stage, Ettridge steps behind Mrs Hanson and adjusts the Australian flag draped across her shoulders).
The Bug: So have you settled on a slogan for the federal campaign?
(Mrs Hanson nods to Ettridge, who crosses the rooms and picks up a full-colour gloss photo of Pauline Hanson in the Australian flag with the slogan: Less Gooks; More Guns blazoned across the bottom. The colour drains instantly from the Member for Oxley's face and she turns stoney-faced to her far right hand man.)
Hanson: David, you know that's not what we decided on! (She raps Ettridge's hand and mocks him gently) Is it any wonder you now only speak on adminstrationative side of things? Less Gooks is real bad English. David knows as well as I do that we decide at last week's meeting to make it: Fewer Gooks; More Guns.
The Bug: That's rather racist, isn't it?
Hanson: Thank you.
The Bug: So as far as you're concerned, multiculturalism is dead?
Hanson: And buried. It's just natural for people to want other people to look and be like they are. Assimilation is the new buzz word for Australia.
The Bug: Is that why you believe you'll go well in NSW at next year's state elections? Because multiculturalism has been embraced here more than anywhere else?
Hanson: Exactly. We'll pick up a swag of seats across New South Wales.
The Bug: Any inroads into city electorates?
Hanson: Sadly no. One Nation won't win any seats in places like Cabramatta because most voters there are illegal aliens who aren't on the roll and therefore have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Ettridge: The status quo chi ming.
Hanson: Shut up, David! No, some of those Sydney suburbs are too far gone to be re-Australianised. One Nation policy is to give them the chopstick and leave them to their own vices.
Ettridge: They're not really happy there but it's a classic case of not being able to see the wood for the Chees.
Hanson: Shut up, David. No. Our core support base remains the decent, financially struggling, white, truck-driving, beer-gutted, bearded Anglo Saxon folk and their husbands living in regional and provincial NSW – such as the seat of Blue Mountains – who can see what's going on in places like Cabramatta and the danger those ghettos represent to Australia ever truly being one nation.
The Bug: They hate the idea of seeing a slice of Sydney developing as an enclave and talking in a foreign language?
Hanson: Yeah, they really hate that – and being too far away to be able to buy the cheap takeaways of course.
(At this point in the interview, Mrs Hanson lapses briefly into bars two and three from Advance Australia's Fair to prove her point . She flirtatiously adjusts the Australian flag that's fallen provocatively off her shoulders).
The Bug: Should other ethnic minorities fear a One Nation government in New South Wales?
Hanson: Of course not. Naturally enough, Jews will be welcome to continue living and working in Sydney when we defeat Carr. (NSW Premier Bob Carr). But you've got to admit they do stand out a bit when they're walking on the streets to and from their synonyms in the eastern suburbs. All One Nation would be asking of the Jewish people is that they dress a little less formally in public – some colourful board shorts and thongs would be nice, especially in Bondi junction - and we'd like them to replace those drab skull caps with some nice coloured beanies. Government issue beanies, naturally.
The Bug: What about the Greeks?
Hanson: They can stay. As long as they get nose jobs.
The Bug: And the Italians?
Hanson: Sorry. Cheap subsidised passage back to where they belong.
The Bug: Italy?
Hanson: Melbourne.
The Bug: Finally, Mrs Hanson, back on the Queensland election result briefly . You said all along that your members of the Queensland Parliament would remain totally independent. Now it looks as if you might be willing to prop up a minority Borbidge Government. Isn't that a little inconsistent ... the sort of hypocrisy you condemn in the main parties?
Hanson: No, that's not true. We'd just be maintaining a right-wing government in power other than Beattie's communists.
The Bug: Without getting into bed with Rob Borbidge?
Hanson: Exactly. No deals whatsoever.
The Bug: Do you really expect us to swallow that?
Hanson: Why not? I would.
The Bug: In the interests of stable government?
Hanson: Partly that. And the fact that I'm an Ipswich girl.
The Bug: Mrs Hanson, thanks for your time.
Mrs Hanson: Thank you. Got time for a singalong before you head off? All together now.... Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free from skin pigmentation ..... You didn't ask me any questions about WIK. Have I told you about this dreadful recurring nightmare that's been plaguing me ever since the High Court land rights decision. This big black bastard appears before me and it's painfully obvious what he intends to do with his rainbow serpent......