Real History and attempts to halt Free Speech Index to the Traditional Enemies of Free Speech Alphabetical index (text) your index on Australia A heads up for Down Under: for readers in Australia and New Zealand only London, Australia backs jailed rightwinger From Roger Maynard in Sydney PAULINE HANSON, the right-wing standard-bearer in Australia, began her first full day in jail yesterday for electoral fraud as supporters

called her the country’s only political prisoner, and likened her to Nelson Mandela . There were also concerns about the safety of Ms Hanson, the founder of the One Nation Party and a harsh critic of Asian immgration and Aboriginal welfare, who has been locked up in a high-security wing of Wacol women’s prison near Brisbane. The jail has a large proportion of Aboriginal inmates.

With radio talk-show callers describing her as a Joan of Arc figure, she has won far more support behind bars than she ever enjoyed on the campaign trail. Debbie Kilroy , a member of the Queensland prisoner advocate group Sisters Inside, said Ms Hanson could expect a difficult time in jail. Yet the irony of the harsh sentence is that her former detractors have united in their condemnation of her judicial treatment.

Suddenly the former fish-and-chip shop owner, who was once the favourite target of the chattering classes, is being described as a political detainee. By late yesterday radio stations were reporting an unprecedented groundswell of support for her. One media monitoring organisation estimated that at least 71 per cent of callers were rallying behind Ms Hanson, with the figure rising to 89 per cent in Western Australia and New South Wales.

On her official website, an unsigned statement described the three-year sentence as a political milestone and compared the prison term to the former incarceration of Mr Mandela. One of Australia’s most prominent state political leaders, Bob Carr , the Premier of New South Wales, who had been a “diehard critic” of Ms Hanson’s policies, said: “Prison is basically there to get violent people away from us. Is prison the right way to treat an offence of this type? I don’t think so.”

Bob McMullan , the finance spokesman for the Labor Party, agreed that the penalty seemed extreme for the crime. But Mark Latham , the federal treasury spokesman for Labor , said: “She’s just been a candidate in the recent NSW election campaigning for tougher penalties; now she’s got one.”