Australia- IT COULD come to this: a forensic examination of Pauline Hanson’s belly button.

The politician insists she is not the young woman posing in nude photographs splashed across New Limited’s Sunday newspapers. That woman had a very distinctive navel — affectionately called an “outie”. Does Hanson have an “innie”? And is she willing to subject herself to such a comparison?

“I’m not going to belittle myself, to go into detail as far as that,” she said at a news conference in Brisbane yesterday. But then added: “I will if I need to.”

And perhaps she will need to when she takes News Limited and the Nine and Seven networks to court for defamation. It would be one of many humiliations in her public life, including jail for electoral fraud, of which she was later cleared.

Hanson, a candidate for the seat of Beaudesert in Saturday’s Queensland election, stridently denied The Sunday Herald Sun’s story and the claims of its informant, Jack Johnson, 52, who says he took the photos of Hanson when they had a fling in the mid-1970s. A self-described former army commando, Johnson says he has cancer and sold his story for $15,000 to pay for his treatment.

Mr Johnson, with his face pixilated, appeared on Channel Seven’s Today Tonight last night, saying: “I didn’t lie. I told it straight up, and now all my mates bloody hate me … I’ve never been the smartest cookie in the barrel.”

He said the photos were genuine. “I took them myself,” he said.

But Mr Johnson was unclear on many key details. He said he was not certain when the pictures were taken, did not know know the name of the resort they were taken at, and did not know the woman’s surname. He said he met a young woman named “Pauline” in a Brisbane grocery shop — she was wearing a name tag — and they went out three times.

The photos were taken after a night of partying. But Mr Johnson said his memory was hazy from chemotherapy he has endured for 12 years in his battle against bone cancer. “I don’t know a lot of stuff that happened back in those days,” he said.

And the Hanson reply? She has never met anyone called Jack Johnson; she has never dated an army man; she has never worked in a Brisbane grocery store; she did not wear her hair that short until almost a decade later when in her 30s; the Pelican Beach Resort at Coffs Harbour, where the photographs were reportedly taken, was not built until 1986; and what’s more: “Those pictures are not of me. It doesn’t even look like me,” she added, but soon conceded: “There is a resemblance, but this is definitely not me.”

The men in Ms Hanson’s life might be able to settle the argument. Her first husband, Walter Zagorski, was with her around the time of the alleged liaison, although Mr Zagorski left her between 1975 and 1977.

Then there is her second husband, Mark Hanson. Last year there was country-and-western singer Chris Callaghan. None could be contacted yesterday.

Sydney Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen said he knew his job was on the line if the photos were found to be fake. But he insisted that was not the case.

“We spent all day Saturday checking, making sure the photos were not doctored,” he said. They had put the images through the image manipulation program Photoshop. “You can see changes in the pixels … if they’ve been doctored,” he said.

But what if it was a genuine photograph of someone else, as Ms Hanson insists? What were the chances that Mr Johnson had an affair with a woman who looked remarkably like Hanson?

“Oh, about one in 5 million,” Mr Breen said. “The pics are of Pauline Hanson.”

He added: “She knew what we had and she chose not to respond, to say she didn’t care about photos.”

Mr Breen suspects Ms Hanson let it run because she knew it would elicit sympathy. Others have suggested the Hanson camp could have been behind the photos’ release to win sympathy and votes.

“I don’t have to stoop that low to get publicity,” Ms Hanson said yesterday.

A former campaign manager for One Nation and Ms Hanson, Richard Rae, said: “Pauline Hanson is many things, but she is not a liar.” He said he had asked Ms Hanson 10 years ago as a barrister might quiz a client before entering court if there were any surprises, anything in her past that might come back to haunt her. Indiscreet photos?

“She never said there were any nude photos,” Mr Rae told The Age. “She said there would be photos, like you and me have photos. But there was nothing that worried her.”

Despite this, the Telegraph’s website quoted Mr Rae to support its case. It said: “Pauline Hanson always knew topless pictures taken more than 30 years ago could come back to haunt her, she just didn’t care, her former campaign mastermind claims.”

Ms Hanson showed young photos of herself sporting shoulder-length hair in her autobiography Untamed and Unashamed. But the book contradicts one statement yesterday that she was “happily married” in February 1975. The book says she was aware of Mr Zagorski’s infidelity and soon afterwards he abandoned her and her two sons.