DESPITE weeks of denials, One Nation founder Pauline Hanson will announce today she will stand in next month’s NSW election.

Ms Hanson — who has put her Queensland home on the market and is living in the southern Sydney suburb of Sylvania Waters — told The Australian last night she would run on the NSW upper house ticket at the March 22 poll.

Three weeks ago, Ms Hanson described as “ridiculous” reports that she intended to run in the election, particularly because she was worried voters might associate her with her former adviser — and now nemesis — David Oldfield.

At the time, Ms Hanson said she was more interested in chasing a NSW seat in the next federal election and concentrating on her country & western music debut with singer Brian Letton. Last night, she would not say why she had changed her mind.

“It’s upper house, that’s all I can say right now … all I can tell you is I am flat-out,” Ms Hanson said.

Ms Hanson expelled Mr Oldfield — who is now a NSW upper house MP — from her party in 2000. He went on to register his own renegade party, NSW One Nation.

“I am surprised … just running on her name alone might be quite popular,” Mr Oldfield said. But Ms Hanson said yesterday she wanted nothing to do with Mr Oldfield and had “no respect” for him.

She is eligible to run in the NSW election if she has lived in NSW for 28 days and is on the electoral role.

Also last night, Michael Chamberlain, who became a reluctant public figure when his daughter, Azaria, was thought to have been snatched by a dingo in the early 1980s, launched his Liberal Party campaign for the NSW parliament.

The former Seventh Day Adventist pastor will test his faith like never before when he stands for the blue-ribbon Labor seat of Lake Macquarie at the NSW election against incumbent Jeffery Hunter.

“The psychiatrists say I have been through four lifetimes,” the publicity-shy Mr Chamberlain said last night. “What I have gone through is an apprenticeship for what I am doing now … I have seen the best and worst.”

Interest in his political stand has been high since the rumour was confirmed as fact early last week, but Mr Chamberlain maintained a stubborn silence until last night, when he outlined a platform of purely local issues for the March 22 state election.

He will need a miracle.

Lake Macquarie is a Labor comfort zone: it has been in the party’s hands since its inception in 1950, and a virtual fiefdom of the Hunter family since 1969.