TIMESONLINE: A set of risque photographs taken 30 years ago has threatened to derail the latest attempt at a comeback by Australian far right politician Pauline Hanson.
Ms Hanson, who briefly achieved international infamy with a campaign against Asian immigration in the 1990s, was aged around 19 when the pictures were taken by her then boyfriend, former army commando Jack Johnson.
They showed the former leader of the One Nation party partially naked and dressed in lingerie after a drunken night at a luxury Queensland resort.
Mr Johnson, who sold the pictures to Australia's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, said he was digitising his old photographs when a friend saw the images of Ms Hanson and suggested he could make some money out of them.
"Sorry it's come to this, sweetheart - that's the way it is," Mr Johnson told the newspaper. >>> Anne Barrowclough in Sydney | Sunday, March 15, 2009
TIMESONLINE: Pauline Hanson Denies Nude Photographs Are of Her
Mystery surrounds a set of nude pictures allegedly taken 30 years ago of the Australian far-right politician Pauline Hanson.
The photographs, published across Australian media at the weekend, purport to show the former One Nation leader partially naked and in skimpy lingerie.
But Ms Hanson says the photographs are not her, and has threatened to bare her belly button to prove it.
Jack Johnson, the "former boyfriend" who sold the pictures to the Sunday Telegraph for A$15,000 (£7,000), admitted today that he could not remember when or where the pictures were taken.
The former army commando also said that he could not remember the surname of the girl he photographed after a drunken night out in Queensland in th 1970s.
He told Australia's Seven Network that he knew "in my heart of hearts" that the girl in the photographs was Ms Hanson.
"But what if I'm wrong?" he asked in an apparent admission that he may have misidentified the woman in the pictures. "I was never the smartest cookie in the barrel." >>> Anne Barrowclough in Sydney | Monday, March 16, 2009
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Australia) >>>
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