Ok the gig is up.

It’s time for the comedian playing Pauline Hanson to step forward from behind the mask and accept the plaudits she (he?) deserves.

Since debuting with that maiden speech in 1996, she’s taken the art form of role-playing to a new level, never once breaking character in years of playing the pitch perfect fish n chipper from Ipswich.

Like Con the Fruiterer before her, she has wrung comedic value from the simple concept of retail wisdom writ large, her “please explain” providing as much enduring delight as Con’s “couple a days”.

Now “Pauline Hanson” is at it again. In the lead-up to the election, she’s trying to get her political party labelled “Pauline”, like a cheap perfume. She says one of the key aims of her United Australia Party is … to keep out the Muslims.

Irony this good can’t be real. 

Once the Australian Electoral Commission finds out it’ll all be over — well until she’s revealed as Kath Day-Knight’s long-lost sister on Kath & Kim , leading to a spin-off series. Until then, we’d just like to say thanks for the memories:

  • “Along with millions of Australians, I am fed up to the back teeth with the inequalities that are being promoted by the government and paid for by the taxpayer under the assumption that Aboriginals are the most disadvantaged people in Australia.” — Maiden Speech
  • “If this government wants to be fair dinkum, then it must stop kowtowing to financial markets, international organisations, world bankers, investment companies and big business people.” — ditto
  • “I may be only a fish and chip shop lady, but some of these economists need to get their heads out of the textbooks and get a job in the real world. I would not even let one of them handle my grocery shopping.” — same deal
  • “Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now, it means that I have been murdered. Do not let my passing distract you for even a moment … For the sake of our children and our children’s children, you must fight on.” — Hanson death video, 1997
  • “I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.” — Enough Rope, 2004
  • “I’m going to have the Australian public voting on me… And it’s eight celebrities. There’s four men and four women. And I’m one of the four women that’s been selected to go into this dance competition.” — talking Dancing with the Stars on  Enough Rope
  • “We’re bringing in people from South Africa at the moment, there’s a huge amount coming into Australia, who have diseases, they’ve got AIDS.” — December 2006
  • “What do you feel like?” — Donut King commercial
  • “I suggested that we have dinner in my unit at the Sundowner Village Motel, which had its own cooking facilities … We enjoyed each other’s company and talked for hours. We ended up spending the night together. It was dawn before he left.” — on bedding David Oldfield, Untamed and Unashamed , 2007
  • “Pauline Hanson was born in Brisbane Queensland in 1954 and grew up in the suburb of Woolloongabba. She was educated at Buranda Girls School and Cooparoo State High Brisbane.” — About me section of Hanson’s website (which also invites readers to “view collaborative writings about Pauline on Wikipedia”
  • “Let me be your voice” — Hanson, election website, 2007
  • Swing it sister.