Two Paulines, Two Nations: An Australian Case Study in the Intersection of Popular Music and Politics

Abstract

The 1996 election in the Australian state of Queensland disclosed a new political force that had not previously been reckoned with by the major parties, when grassroots conservative Independent Pauline Hanson was elected to the hitherto ironclad Labor seat of Oxley. In August 1997 she took out an injunction against the country’s publicly funded broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), preventing them from playing a recording of a song called “I’m a Back Door Man,” produced by drag performer Simon Hunt. Although the performer was identified as Hunt’s nom de cabaret Pauline Pantsdown, the recording was made up of samples of Hanson’s voice, edited so as to proclaim herself to be, among many other things, a homosexual. This article provides an account of these events, and some reflection on the convergences of politics, music, and censorship, which they enact.

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