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Martin Lehmann - 24 March 2005 Late in the
afternoon of 20 August 2003, Patsy Wolfe, the Chief Judge of the Brisbane
District Court sentenced David William Ettridge and Pauline Lee Hanson to three
years imprisonment. There was no parole period. Their crime? As founders
of a vibrant new political party they dared to challenge the prevailing
orthodoxy of the ruling elites and the left-wing media in articulating the
unease felt by mainstream Australians about multiculturalism and Aboriginal
welfare. Although these same concerns are regularly expressed in most homes and
offices across Australia, they had hitherto been ruthlessly suppressed in the
public arena by the form of censorship known as political correctness. By the
October 1998 federal election, the One Nation party had 350 branches throughout
Australia with around 18,000 members. The fledgling party scored close to one
million votes in that election. The amazing success triggered a
politically-motivated witch-hunt by the Liberal and Labor parties. Egged on by a
phalanx of screeching, left-wing, politically correct journalists, the
Queensland legal system charged Ettridge and Hanson with electoral fraud. The
Queensland government quickly introduced retrospective legislation to increase
the penalty for the "crime" from six months to seven years. This was
designed to be the death blow for Hanson as the Australian Constitution
prevented any person who had served 12 months or more in prison, from ever
holding a seat in parliament. Sanity and justice only prevailed when the
convictions were overturned by the Queensland Court of Appeal after Ettridge and
Hanson has served eleven weeks in jail. David Ettridge's revealing
book details this most disgraceful episode in Australia's recent political
history. The book should be required reading for all law and politics students
and for all those who cherish democracy. Make no mistake, the shameful events
surrounding Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, strike at the heart of our
democratic process. One of the many revelations of this book is that
Ettridge and Hanson's case was seriously damaged by the mistakes made by the first judge
to try the case. This judge was one of the many females in
the Queensland legal system who were catapulted into senior
positions ahead of more experienced and competent male colleagues, by a Labor
government toadying to the feminist lobby in order to get their votes. It is shameful that a
dynamic new political party capable of attracting one million votes in a federal election, could be destroyed by a
coalition of politically correct zealots in the media, politics and the legal
establishment.
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