Fed: First I knew of fund was when I read it in paper: Fischer

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Fed: First I knew of fund was when I read it in paper: Fischer

By Selina Day

PERTH, Aug 27 AAP - Former National Party leader Tim Fischer said today the first heknew of any efforts by Tony Abbott to fund legal action against One Nation was when heread about them in the newspapers in late 1998.

Mr Abbott is under fire after revelations he set up a trust, Australians for HonestPolitics, from donations, to pay for a legal challenge to One Nation and its founder,Pauline Hanson.

The workplace relations minister said he organised a separate $10,000 donation to supportOne Nation dissident Terry Sharples in his bid to get an injunction stopping the partyfrom receiving public electoral funds.

Mr Sharples' court action succeeded in having the party deregistered in Queensland,which last week led to the jailing of Hanson and party co-founder David Ettridge for threeyears for electoral fraud.

Mr Abbott said he was working alone when he offered to finance court action against One Nation.

It has emerged that Mr Fischer, who was then National Party leader and deputy primeminister, made a phone call to former One Nation member Paul Trewartha, in 1998.

Mr Fischer said today he had made many phone calls to Queenslanders during 1998, inthe context of the upcoming federal election.

He said the calls were to argue against what he called One Nation's "poisonous policies"

that would have damaged foreign trade efforts.

"What I admit to having done is ... simply argued the toss about trade policies - nomore, no less," Mr Fischer told ABC Radio.

"I've got nothing to hide, because it's more than likely he (Mr Trewartha) was oneof the many people I rang that year in Queensland and Western Australia.

"It is likely that I made that phone call. It is not necessarily likely that I haddetailed knowledge or was activated by the particularity of the efforts that were goingon elsewhere."

Mr Fischer said fundraising efforts were always going on.

"I deny that I was aware of detailed planning, or other aspects of a trust, which subsequentlydid surface in the newspapers," he said.

Mr Fischer said he knew of a trust fund only in late 1998.

"I was aware at the end of the year, obviously, because it was in the newspapers," he said.

AAP sd/ak/jlw/

KEYWORD: HANSON ABBOTT FISCHER