今日吃瓜

Pauline Hanson is the cockroach of Australian politics, in the sense that every time you think she’s disappeared, she’ll suddenly appear again behind the fridge. And now, with her popularity inexplicably skyrocketing and One Nation filling the “I vote for whoever allows me to be a proud bigot” gap left behind by the Coalition, everyone is asking one important question:

Will Pauline Pantsdown return?

“There’s no immediate plans,” says drag queen and activist Simon Hunt, aka Pauline Pantsdown to Star Observer. “I think it’s actually not the right time.”

Hunt explains that I’m not the first person to ask the question, especially after Hanson’s recent performance at the National Press Club dominated the headlines.

“Everyone except for me thinks that now is the time,” Hunt explains. “It’s not the time, we’re just gonna let One Nation show themselves a bit more. It’s the third time I’ve seen this this cycle of Pauline Hanson’s supposed return to popularity. I mean it’s really extreme this time in terms of numbers, but she can’t govern, you know? Pauline Hanson is not competent and also will not trust the people around her. Donald Trump is like a moron, but at least he puts all these people around him who are more competent, you know?”

For those , Pauline Pantsdown is a musical icon, a drag satire of Pauline Hanson and her regressive politics who arguably has had a bigger impact on politics and culture than the object of her lampooning.

Under the Pauline Pantsdown persona, Hunt released satirical music that became a fixture of Australian pop culture. The 1997 single built from sampled fragments of Hanson鈥檚 speeches, became a breakout hit on Triple J, receiving heavy rotation and ranking highly in listener polls, before being , who argued it was defamatory.

‘Backdoor Man’ consists of a series of samples of Hanson’s speeches stuck together to form sentences such as “I’m a backdoor man. I’m homosexual. I’m very proud of it”, and “I’m a backdoor man for the Ku Klux Klan with very horrendous plans. I’m a very caring potato”, parodying Hanson’s conservative politics.

The follow-up track, , also sampled Hanson鈥檚 voice but focused more broadly on satirising her political rhetoric – it ranked high on the Triple J Hottest 100, reached the top 10 on the ARIA Charts and was later nominated for Best Comedy Release at the ARIA Music Awards. Hunt says the song “epitomised the whinging, that she would complain about things, and never have solutions”.

Hunt tells me that with Hanson’s surge in popularity, ‘I Don’t Like It’ has been “going absolutely fucking wild in terms of streaming and stuff”.

Beyond simple satire, Simon Hunt used Pauline Pantsdown as a tool for political activism as well, such as changing his name by deed poll so that he would run on the electoral ballot for the 1998 senate elections as “Pauline Pantsdown”. He later changed it back to his real name.

“Doing something right now would be the best thing that I could do for myself financially, but with me it’s always about doing what’s more effective,” Hunt says, not ruling out an eventual return if Hanson continues to persist, like an gay Aussie version of the King Arthur legend, returning to us in our time of need.

After Hanson won a place in the senate in 2016, Hunt also considered a return as Pantsdown at the urging of an excited public, but decided against it. In the same year, in a televised clip, Hanson referred to Hunt as “a joke” and said he was “an absolute idiot ratbag”, proving that Pantsdown still has squatting rights in Hanson’s head.

” 2028,” he muses. “I think 2028’s a better time. If we’re going to go for repeats, I could run for election again which is sort of fun last time – although it costs a bit more money these days.”