While most of the nation's political class watched agog as former One Nation persecutor Tony Abbott lauded Queensland senator Pauline Hanson while launching her new book, we were equally intrigued by the name that graces the cover below Hanson's.
Compiling the collection of Hanson speeches, and writing the book's introduction is a little-known journalist called Tom Ravlic. Little-known to the broader public, that is, but not, we would imagine, to Hanson.
Ravlic spent much of 2017 publishing a series of critical articles on One Nation in small, relatively left-wing publications. From March to August last year, Crikey published a series of pieces by Ravlic on governance failures, "micromanagement" and "rookie accounting" in One Nation, while in The Saturday Paper, Ravlic accused One Nation of breaking electoral rules (that piece was retracted, and an apology issued).
So how'd he come to be writing Hanson's book? Ravlic told us the idea came from MIchael Wilkinson, of Wilkinson Publishing, who first hired Ravlic as an accounting trade journo back in 1996. Ravlic hadn't dealt with Hanson directly before, his earlier reporting having involved liaising more with her office. Because the book is a collection of speeches, there was no need for Ravlic to gain Hanson's trust to the extent a biographer would. Still, "it would be fair to say she was a bit surprised it was me pulling it together", he said. But the two collaborated on what would go in it. And it's clear Hanson is pleased with the result.
