Pauline Hanson

Pauline Lee Hanson (née Seccombe, formerly Zagorski; born 27 May 1954) is an Australian politician and the leader of One Nation, a far right political party with a populist, conservative, and anti-multiculturalism platform. She held this position from 1997, when she co-founded the party, to her expulsion from One Nation in 2002. She returned to the leadership in 2014. Hanson was a member of the Australian House of Representatives, representing the Brisbane-based seat of Oxley, from 1996 to 1998, as an independent and as leader of One Nation.

Hanson was born in Brisbane, Queensland. Her parents owned a fish and chip shop in Ipswich, Queensland, in which Hanson and her siblings worked. She is the fifth of seven children. Hanson left school at 15, married at 16, and had two children by the time she was about 21. The marriage ended in a divorce, and Hanson took several low-skilled clerical occupations to support her children. She married again and started a plumbing and roofing business, based in Ipswich, with her new husband, and had two more children.