Last night Pauline Hanson used Facebook to live-stream her watching a documentary about herself, in an attempt to make sure that she had the right of reply throughout SBS’s Pauline Hanson: Please Explain.
“So this is on my life in politics from 1996 to 2004 and leading up to the last state Queensland election and this one. What I’ve seen in the promos I haven’t been impressed at all. So although its called Pauline Hanson: Please Explain, if the truth is not portrayed in this documentary I am going to be asking SBS for a ‘please explain’, myself.”
The video goes for the full hour and a half of the doco, and while it had the potential to become a Gogglebox-style smash hit, full of hot takes and commentary, Hanson is actually quiet and still. At the start she says “that’s rubbish, absolute,” but because the volume of the television is low, it is unclear what she was referring to. She blinks and shakes her head at times, but rarely commentates. At the end she says, “Um it’s um I just don’t know how I feel about it … I suppose it’s up to the people what they get out of it.”
She defends herself, saying that the message is about standing up for what you believe in. Maybe Hanson needn’t have worried — the show didn’t rate too well in regional Australia, where many of her voters live. About 139,000 people in regional Australia watched it live, where it was the 22nd most popular show of the night. It did better in the five main capital cities, with 405,000 viewers making it the 14th most-watched show. If you haven’t watched it, Ms Tips thought it fantastic television, benefiting from close contact with both Hanson and her campaign teams both past and current, as well as interviews with some of her biggest critics. It’s on SBS On Demand if you missed it the first time. We’ll leave the option of watching it with Hanson’s audio commentary up to you.The full video from Hanson is here and from SBS here.
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