Long before her media bans, Pauline held a sleepover for journalists

August 6, 2026 — 9:40am

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There is a surrealistic scene written almost 30 years ago by a former colleague of mine that describes her night at Pauline Hanson’s country retreat on what is known as Queensland’s Scenic Rim.

Margo Kingston, who was a take-no-prisoners journalist working at the Canberra bureau of The Sydney Morning Herald at the time, 1998, described Hanson’s home as idyllic, with vast tracts of polished floors surrounded by big windows granting views of pasture and bushland where cattle and horses grazed.

However, she found the place to be more fortress than haven: a police guard sat in a caravan at the gate, and every door and window was double-bolted.

Margo wasn’t a One Nation sort of person, to put it mildly. One of her abiding interests was Aboriginal affairs, and she was volubly critical of the strong thread of racism running through Hanson’s public rhetoric and that of One Nation’s supporters.

Yet, Hanson invited Kingston and another journalist following the 1998 Hanson election campaign, Helen McCabe of The Daily Telegraph, to dinner at her country home, breaking up a roasted chicken and piling plates with salami, cheese and bread.

“We ate the chicken with our hands, drank red wine and discussed Aboriginal affairs,” wrote Kingston in her subsequent book Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip, an eye-popping, almost hallucinogenic and sometimes nightmarish account of the 1998 federal election campaign.

The election turned out to be a disaster for Hanson, despite polling and dreamers suggesting there could be an upset almost as astounding as the Queensland state election four........

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